


blood bond

by dancingrat



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Don't say I didn't warn you, Emotional Constipation, M/M, Magic School, Minor Park Jisung/Zhong Chen Le, Slow Burn, Vampires, Witches, emphasis on, emphasis on SLOW, now that this has gotten unexpectedly long i think it's fair to call it, university type setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 35
Words: 236,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22329838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancingrat/pseuds/dancingrat
Summary: Renjun didn’t let many know he was half-human. It would have been social, if not actual, suicide in a school of witches and vampires.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno
Comments: 2662
Kudos: 3095





	1. friday night

“I’m not going to the stupid party,” Renjun said, for the third time in the past five minutes.

“Oh come on, live it up a little. It’s Friday,” said Donghyuck. “It’s the last party the vamps are throwing this whole year.”

“And I care because…? It’s already almost November, and the vamps throw parties all the time.” Renjun didn’t bother to mention that he rarely went to any of them.

Donghyuck shook his head. “Oh Renjun, this isn’t just any party. It’s the biggest vamp party of the year! It’s not just the usual crowd that will be there, but the Big. Fucking. Three. Park Jisung, Lee Jeno, and Na Jaemin. They’re from some of the top vamp families. Plus, Jeno and Jaemin are the hottest vamps, no, the hottest guys in our year. Do you get what that means?”

“That the other one isn’t one of the ‘hottest’ guys in our year?” Renjun made air quotes with his fingers as he said ‘hottest’. Donghyuck was almost a professional at hyperbole, and Renjun wasn’t in the mood to indulge him.

“What, no. Jisung’s not in our year. He’s two years younger than us but skipped a grade because he’s that good. So I wouldn’t say he’s hot. Pretty cute though, in a first year I’m lost I need help kind of way.”

“Didn’t you just say he’s a second year?”

Donghyuck waved his hand and sighed. “You’re missing the point, dear Renjun.” He leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “Did you know Yeri said you can wash your clothes on Jeno’s and Jaemin’s abs?”

“Ugh, how does she know this?”

Donghyuck wagged his eyebrows and shrugged. “Is that even a question? Anyway, the point is, if they’re there all the hottest people will be there. You’re missing out on a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“Lifetime, my ass. I’m pretty sure they go to more than one party a lifetime.”

Donghyuck waited for Renjun to say more, but when he didn’t, he said, “Not the same parties you get invited to.” Renjun noticed how Donghyuck didn’t say we. So he probably did get invited to those parties. Renjun couldn’t say he was surprised. Donghyuck seemed to know everyone. “So this is _the_ party. Are you going or not?”

“I already said—“

“Come _on_ ,” Donghyuck whined. “I don’t want to be the loser that goes alone. It’ll be like I have no friends.”

Renjun rolled his eyes. It was ironic to hear this from Donghyuck. Donghyuck was loud, opinionated, and had no filter. He also had a penchant of messing with the professors. This made him a crowd favorite among both vampires and witches -- a feat in itself. Vampires didn’t usually like witches all that much, and vice versa -- so if anything, his problem was the opposite of having no friends.

Renjun, on the other hand… He didn’t need a party to remind him of the loser he was. Okay, maybe he was being a little harsh on himself. He wasn’t a loser. Even in his own eyes, he was normal. He was somewhat funny, somewhat interesting, not particularly awkward but not a social butterfly like Donghyuck either. He would’ve gotten along fine, plodded along the path most humans took, blending in as one of them, if he hadn’t been sent to this academy. He’d had just enough power that his mother decided he needed to get taught, barely more than the latent capacity of a human. Among witches and vampires, being someone without particular talent or power was synonymous with having really bad acne, or being an obnoxious know-it-all, or any of those other things that made someone stand out for all the wrong reasons. 

“Sorry, Donghyuck, I really need to figure out this out. I’d like to get a passing grade in Magic for once.” He wasn’t lying, he really did need to figure this assignment out. He sighed, looking at the flower pot in front of him. It had a sad sprout in the center, barely poking its tip out of the dirt.

The assignment should have been easy, as proven by Donghyuck, who within minutes had gotten a tulip to dig its way up from the dirt and bloom into full crimson glory. But as usual, magic didn’t work the way Renjun wanted. For the third time this afternoon, he focused and tried to remember what a professor some long time ago had said. _Find the energy within yourself, then envision yourself taking just a drop of it. Send this drop through your arm and out your fingertips._

The flowerpot shook slightly, and the sprout inched up another couple millimeters. A sense of weariness ghosted over him, briefly. He knew it’d manifest into true fatigue by the time this was done, as it always did.

“See?” said Renjun. “This is going to take me all night. You’re on your own, Hyuck.”

Donghyuck snorted. “Now you’re just messing with me.”

When Renjun glared at him instead of replying, Donghyuck realized he made a mistake. “Oh…you weren’t joking. Wait, Renjun, seriously, you can’t have that little magic. Maybe your technique is wrong. You really have to think about drawing a drop of the energy down your arm. Like pulling it out. And you have to envision clearly what you want to do with that energy, or it’s going to dissipate. So here you have to imagine growth and the final vision of a fully bloomed flower. I can search Google for some images of tulips for you.”

Renjun stared balefully at Donghyuck’s completed assignment. The plant with its vibrant green leaves and the red petals large and delicate was just a bit too colorful to have come from natural growth. Renjun didn’t need a Google image search when perfection was right in front of him.

Noticing Renjun’s look, Donghyuck shrugged. Renjun ran his hands through his hair, frustrated. “That’s what I’m trying to do though. I don’t know, maybe it’s my human side. Maybe my magic is weaker because of that.” Renjun didn’t let many know he was half-human. It would have been social, if not actual, suicide in a school of witches and vampires. Half-humans weren’t looked upon well by either vampires or witches. They were physically equivalent to humans, and so weaker than full-blood witches and vampires. There were certain sects of the witch community that thought they shouldn’t be considered witches to begin with – many were barren of magic. Worse, at least for Renjun who cared more about immediate danger to his life than his status in the witch community, they were seen as prey by some vampires. He shuddered at the thought.

He had never planned on telling Donghyuck either, but after his first party when he’d had a little (quite a lot – turns out witch tolerance is much better than half-human tolerance) too much to drink, the words had come tumbling out one after the other before he could stop himself, falling between them like stones upon hard ground. He had been on the verge of tears, or actually crying but it doesn’t matter and he blames the alcohol, when Donghyuck had placed an arm around his shoulder. They had sat in silence for a while, and eventually Donghyuck had said, “You could be a flying sack of horseshit for all I care. We’d still be friends.”

Donghyuck didn’t know how much those words had saved him. So he put up with Donghyuck’s antics, even when he was being a pain in the ass. Which was often.

“If your magic is that weak, maybe you should use more,” Donghyuck said.

Renjun frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Like you know how the professor always says to use a drop because we don’t want to put too much magic into the spell – since your magic is weaker maybe you need more than a drop. Maybe you need a puddle.”

“A puddle… You sound real smart, Hyuck,” Renjun said. “It’s not a bad idea though.”

“Of course not. It’s from yours truly, how could it be a bad idea?”

“Okay, okay, let me try this.”

“Great, but if it works, you’re coming right?”

Renjun made a non-committal noise. He closed his eyes. Technically, now that they were third years, they weren’t supposed to close their eyes to cast magic – it was meant to be a trick for focusing when they had first started. For Renjun though, it was hard enough to keep his focus with his eyes closed.

He reached for the energy inside himself. _Look for the pale glow, and when you get closer to it, it may look like a glowing orb or a pool of light. It may be hard to recognize at first, but once you get used to finding it you'll be able to find it instantly._ Unlike the others, for him finding the energy was the easiest part, perhaps because he spent so much time trying to find it again and again after the drops he took from it fizzled out before they reached his fingertips. Even the first time, it had been hard to miss. It pulsed with the beat of his heart, not quite any specific color, but blindingly bright with lines of darkness slashing through its center. The lines of darkness moved with the beating, expanding and contracting. The professor hadn't mentioned any pulsing or dark lines, and when he asked others what they saw, they all mentioned mentioned steady pale light. Renjun figured the difference was probably from his human blood. He hadn’t asked about it.

He reached into the energy, readying himself. This part, which came so naturally to most everyone else, was the hard part for him. The moment he grasped a drop, the entirety of the energy would pulsate and shudder, tremors running up and down its side. And the drop he took would fight against him, struggling to rejoin the rest of the energy. He always had to pull the drop as quickly as he could to his fingertips to prevent it from disappearing, and even then he often had less than half of what he started with.

This time, instead of pinching off a droplet, he envisioned himself dipping his hands into the energy. The professor had said not to think of their interactions with the energy as physical movements, as that could limit their ability to manipulate it when they started learning advanced magic. But Renjun thought that he deserved some allowances since the professors treated him with the expectation that he would never reach the advanced magics. He had come to terms with that.

Kind of.

Even if he wanted to, he hadn't succeeded yet in using magic without imagining some kind of hand motion.

So he cupped the energy in his hands and lifted out what he imagined was a handful. To his shock, the energy pooled on his imaginary palms. The amount that filled his hands still pulsated with the beat of the energy and flickered with dark lines, but it didn’t fight him or leap out of his hands.

He tentatively started moving the energy toward his fingers. The handful pulsed slightly faster, but other than that, nothing. The energy even felt different than usual, as if it were ready to be used. As if it wanted to leave his body.

He fought to quell the rising sense of excitement inside himself. He’d had enough disappointments. But a small part of himself couldn't help wondering if all he had needed to do this whole time was use more of the energy. Was this what it felt like to the others when they were casting magic?

He opened his eyes and guided the energy out of his fingertips and to the flowerpot. The sprout began shooting up. Leaves shot out of the stem as it grew, and a bud formed at the tip.

“Yes!” he said triumphantly. He didn’t even feel more tired than usual, though he’d used so much magic. Just a ghosting of tiredness, similar to when he tried to use one drop of magic. Maybe even less.

“Told you,” Donghyuck said. “You did do what I said right?”

“For once I will admit that you are a fucking genius, Lee Donghy—”

The bud trembled and opened with a spray of dust, and Renjun knew something was wrong. The bud flared into a ring of dark red-brown petals that stretched like claws across the room. “Shit.” Donghyuck and Renjun jumped backward, but petals only lasted an instant before they began to wilt and crumple into themselves. One by one they shriveled into dust that fell onto the ground around the pot, and the stem itself began to darken and crumble. Where the petal dust touched the ground, it formed black spots that ate into the wood floorboards.

They sat in silence as the dust settled over the charred stump of what once was a plant and the dark indents in the floor.

“We’re not getting our deposit back,” Donghyuck muttered.

“Sorry,” Renjun said. He couldn’t tell what he was more sorry about, damaging the apartment or getting his stupid hopes up. Again. He shook his head slightly, letting his bangs fall into his eyes. He hoped it would hide the water he felt rising at the edges of his eyes. He shook his head again. He was not going to cry. Not about this.

He was distracted from his thoughts by the sound of Donghyuck chuckling. “Hey, hey, why are you so serious? I was just kidding. We can fix it up with some magic later.”

Right. Renjun had forgotten that his roommate was Lee Donghyuck, magic prodigy.

“Though seriously, how did you do that? I’ve never seen a flower explode like that, even when we were trying to get your plants to explode during the holidays—”

“You were trying to _what_?”

“We needed fireworks, remember?”

Renjun looked at him incredulously.

“Oh, that wasn’t with you, was it? Well, nevermind then.”

“Wait you were doing what with my plants? You can’t just—”

“Point is, there’s nothing you can do about that anymore.” Donghyuck waved at the blackened stump of a homework assignment. “Which means your Friday evening is free. Which means you’re going to the party.”

Renjun groaned. He didn’t think that was the point. 

But with his already abysmal Magic grade on its way to a new low, he could use a drink.

“Fine,” he said.

Donghyuck cheered.

* * *

Renjun stood shivering as Donghyuck told their names to the vampire bouncer in front of them. He wouldn’t have agreed to this if he had known that “biggest vamp party of the year” was _actually_ the biggest vampire party of the year. There had been a line that wrapped around the block to get into the party, which was crazy, and crazier still was the fact that he had stood in this line for the past 30 minutes. If it hadn’t been for Donghyuck’s hand digging into his shoulder, he would have turned around the moment they got there.

And this was definitely a vampire party.

There was no small number of witches scattered throughout line, but Renjun had never seen so many vampires at a party. Most vampires from stronger bloodlines were pretty exclusive, so they rarely went to parties outside of private bashes. This meant that any non-private party, even those hosted by vampires, was usually majority witch. Somehow Donghyuck managed to worm his way into invites to some of those private vampire bashes, but though he had invited Renjun a couple of times, Renjun had never gone.

“Donghyuck?” the vampire in front of them said. “I heard about you. That shit you pulled in Math a couple years ago? That shit was awesome.” Renjun didn’t know why vampires, or witches really, needed to know the derivative of x2, but the class was a requirement for first years. Notorious for its finicky professor and impossible tests, it continued to draw of ire of vampires and witches alike. Of course, Donghyuck had managed to cast some vanishing magic on the professor’s pants during one particularly long afternoon lesson about area under the curve. He probably would have gotten away with it, if he hadn’t fist pumped the air and shouted, “Hell, yeah!”

Donghyuck shrugged as if it were no big deal, but Renjun could tell he was preening from the attention. He rolled his eyes.

The vampire waved them past, and they walked up the driveway and through the door of the mansion into a dim foyer. A staircase wrapped around the side of the room to the upper floors. Renjun could hear music blaring from some other room. People stood mingling with drinks in hand, or sprawled upon couches.

One of the larger couches had noticeably more people than the others, with three males in the center surrounded by a gaggle of other males and females. Renjun squinted at the crowd, trying to identify the people, but he didn’t have to since Donghyuck leaned over and whispered in his ear, “It’s them. This is crazy.”

“Them?”

“Come on, Renjun. I know you live under a rock, but how can you not recognize them? Jisung, Jeno, and Jaemin. The triple threat.”

“I know who they are. My eyesight’s bad,” Renjun complained. He didn’t explain that by “know” he meant he had maybe seen them passing by on campus. Once. “And I thought you already said they were going to be here.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think they were actually going to show up.”

Renjun looked at him sideways.

“Damn Renjun, do I have to spell it out for you? They only go in the most exclusive circles. I have never – and we’re talking about _me_ – seen Jeno or Jaemin at a party. I’ve seen Jisung maybe twice.”

“Right, and?”

Donghyuck put an arm over his shoulder, and flicked a thumb in the trio’s direction. “Let’s check it out.”

Renjun tried to shake him off. “Can we just go get a drink?”

Ignoring his protests about the fact that he only came for the free alcohol, Donghyuck dragged Renjun over to the crowd.

Like the line outside, the crowd was a mix of vampires and witches. Renjun recognized a few of the witches, but knew none of them well. A couple greeted Donghyuck. As he got closer, Renjun felt his heart quickening against his will. He had never felt such a strong vampiric aura. Thick as miasma. He glanced at Donghyuck, but as usual the witch didn’t seem to notice it.

This was another one of the quirks of his half-human nature. Vampires and humans both could sense vampires to some extent. For vampires, it was a conscious way of communication. Renjun had heard from his few vampire friends that sensing and identifying other vampires by their auras was an important part of vampire society. “I don’t know how to explain it,” Renjun remembered Chenle telling him. “Your aura is like a mental sphere…of influence? And you can kind of express your intentions or, um, assert your dominance.” Chenle had ended the conversation there, and Renjun had let him, not wanting to press him about vampiric mental games the lower-tier vampire probably wasn’t winning.

Humans sensed vampires in a very different way. They didn’t know they were sensing a vampire, but they felt drawn to them without reason. It didn’t help that vampires were easy on the eyes. If vampires then exerted their mental influence, it was simple to make a human fall prey to them. A few humans had some mental resistance, but most were not only willing to, they _wanted_ to be preyed on by the time the vampire was through with them. Sheep drawn to the slaughter.

Renjun’s human studies class had described it as a feeling somewhere between lust and blind adoration. Renjun remembered the textbook’s words in abject clarity.

‘ _We note these physical reactions within nearly all humans - increased heart rate, increased blood flow, and lowered mental activity. In some cases, pupils may be dilated. The emotion responses recorded by different subjects vary widely, from feelings of admiration to those of procreation. The trustworthiness of the emotional responses recorded has not been verified. Toward the bite, most humans have the reaction of extreme euphoria. It may become addictive over time, so in accordance to Ordinance 351 - Proper Treatment of Inferior Subspecies, it is advised to (1) choose a few humans upon which to prey repeatedly or (2) prey upon many a single time. As in all cases, discretion is advised.’_

Renjun hated remembering those words, but it was a warning he needed. It kept his head clear.

Because of this, Renjun knew he had to be on guard every time he was around vampires. Even though no vampires had sniffed out his human side yet, he didn’t want to risk offering his neck to some passing vampire.

For the most part, his witch side helped dull the feeling. The presence of most vampires felt like a light buzz in his head, and if he kept his focus on his magical energy, he could sometimes block out the buzzing.

It didn’t work so well with stronger vampires, especially when they were releasing their aura like this. Vampires didn’t keep their aura as controlled during a party - they were here for a reason too. Sometimes they kept it more under control in witch-hosted parties, out of politeness.

Like a heavy fog, their presence dampened Renjun’s thoughts, made him feel more... uninhibited, less in control. It wasn't altogether that different from alcohol, except for the throbbing that started from his neck and spread down his body. That insistent throbbing that made him itch to get closer to—

Get a grip on yourself, Renjun. 

He needed to get out of this zone of vampiric influence before he did something he would regret. Though he most certainly wouldn't regret running his hands through the middle vampire's silky, soft black hair. And tilting his head back as he moved his arms down to rest around the vampire's neck. And pulling the vampire's lips to rest on the pulsing vein in his own neck—

Shit.

"Donghyuck, I think I need to—" his voice trailed off as he glanced at Donghyuck. He realized he wasn't the only one feeling the vampires' influence. Donghyuck's eyes were glazed over, mouth spread into a dumb grin. That alone wasn’t too different from usual, but it was not Donghyuck’s style to let this much time pass without some snarky comment. Witches could still feel some of the effects of auras if they were strong enough, it seemed.

Renjun turned his gaze back to the vampires, and felt vaguely that it might have been a mistake as a haze resettled over his mind. The part of his mind that managed to maintain reason marveled at the difference between the three vampire’s auras. The vampire on the right who smiled and chatted with those around him had the warmest aura, exuding friendliness that was noticeable but not stifling. This fell at odds with the vampire on the left, who wasn’t talking much to anyone, mostly watching, fidgeting occasionally with his large hands. His aura felt powerful but tinted with nervousness. Younger. The vampire in the middle mostly watched the crowd and sometimes turned to say something to the other two, but his aura was the most pervasive. For the most part it tasted -- tasted? -- of cold disinterest, but it surged and ebbed like a tide among the crowd, and like the tide pulled some in while pushing others away. He only laughed when talking with his friends, but when he did his face transformed, smile spread across his face and eyes crinkling into crescent moons.

Renjun could almost feel the anticipation of those he chose to pull in, especially that of the girl pressed against the vampire’s chest, and the disappointment of those who were pushed aside. Renjun felt uneasy as he watched this dance of emotions flit across the faces of the various vampires and witches in the group. It felt too much like a hunter choosing his prey.

Prey? Just because he was wired from all the vampires around them, he was overthinking things. There were no humans in the party.

 _Except you_ , a voice in his head whispered.

He pushed the thought away.

He tapped Donghyuck’s shoulder, remembering the question he’d had earlier. “Which…one is…,” the haze made it hard for him to string together the words. “…which?”

Donghyuck turned to Renjun slowly. “Huh?”

Renjun gestured at the three vampires. “Names.”

“Ha…How can you not know this?” Renjun didn’t know whether to be impressed or annoyed that his friend could continue to make jabs while he could barely get a sentence together. Donghyuck pointed at the smiling vampire on the right. “Since I’m such a good friend you should be grateful to have, that’s Jaemin. Far as my intel goes, he’s a flirt and an unintentional heartbreaker, but he’s a nice guy. Likes to talk, as you can see, and he’s got some of the highest grades in his classes.”

Donghyuck shifted his finger to the left, to the one that looked the youngest. “The tall one’s Jisung. Looks young and harmless, but he’s a troublemaker. Got a temper too.

“The one in the middle, that’s Jeno. According to some of the girls, he and Jaemin are at the top of the list for third years you want to sleep with. ’Course for the rest, top of the list is me.”

Renjun glared at Donghyuck, who continued, unperturbed. “I don’t think he’s the brightest of the bunch, but Jeno’s got the athletics and the looks. If he had my lovely personality, he’d be a charmer. He’s a hell of a player though. Don’t think anyone’s seen him stick with someone for more than a week or two.”

As if he’d heard them, Jeno turned his catlike eyes toward them. Dark amber, like a true pure-blood vampire’s. Renjun flinched, though he knew they were hidden within the crowd. The throbbing returned at full-force.

This was why Renjun avoided strong vampires. Being around them _hurt._

“For us, we only care about Jaemin really, since the other two apparently think they’re too good to talk with witches… though a hook-up is a different story…” Donghyuck continued talking, but Renjun had a hard time focusing past the pounding in his head. He knew if he got closer to the vampire in question, it would hurt less, but he didn’t want to. He’d like to think he was better than that.

“Renjun?” he heard Donghyuck’s voice, but it felt far away. He was dimly aware that his breathing had become fast and shallow. He could feel the pounding spreading down his body, rhythmic and demanding.

Panic welling up within him, Renjun reached into his energy and as hard as he could, pushed at the vampire’s aura.

The aura recoiled.

“What the fuck?” Renjun heard someone saying, but he couldn’t care less. Sweet relief flooded his body. He sagged against Donghyuck, who for once seemed more concerned than amused.

Or maybe not. After Renjun had steadied himself, which took longer than he was proud to admit, he murmured his thanks. To which Donghyuck, being Donghyuck, responded, “No need to be shy. You can lean on me, baby.”

Renjun would have choked him for that insolence, but he was distracted by a commotion in the front.

Jeno was standing, the girl that had been on his arm shoved to the ground. She pushed herself backward on the ground away from him, clutching the arm that had probably hit the ground, and made her exit into the crowd, shame-faced. Jaemin had a hand on Jeno’s shoulder and was whispering in his ear. Though Jaemin’s face didn’t betray any distress, his shoulders were tense. Renjun could see why. Jeno’s so-called handsome face was taut with anger. Even Jisung looked mildly alarmed, which was the only emotion besides nervousness than Renjun had seen out of him so far.

“What do you mean calm down? Didn’t you feel that? Someone fucking challenged me,” Jeno snarled.

That was enough for Renjun. He didn’t want to be around a strong and angry vampire. So instead of choking Donghyuck as he rightfully deserved to, he ended up pleading in a voice much more pathetic than he meant it to be, “Can we go get drinks now?”

“And miss this?” Sometimes Renjun wished Donghyuck didn’t have such an insatiable taste for drama.

“I’m going to get a drink then. I’ll see you later.” Donghyuck didn’t protest, didn’t even respond, which was disappointing but Renjun didn’t expect much different. No one was going to drag Donghyuck away from watching a fight.

Renjun slipped out of the crowd, away from the mixture of eager and tense onlookers. He didn’t realize how tense he himself had been until he was further away and felt a knot he hadn’t noticed in his chest loosen. He wandered deeper into the mansion, feeling uncomfortably alone without Donghyuck and then feeling uncomfortable for feeling that way.

At last he found the alcohol, several tall jugs of the typical witch brew. Vampires weren’t much for mixing drinks, since their preferred beverage was drunk straight from the source. They could drink alcohol and get some of the same buzz a witch or human might, but if they were going to get drunk they preferred the blood of a drunk human (or witch. Renjun had learned since coming to this academy that this type of arrangement wasn’t unpopular). In his desire to calm his strained nerves, he poured himself a little more than he usually would have, finished it, and started on another glass. _Just until Donghyuck gets here_ , he promised himself. It wasn’t like he had much else to do. He didn’t recognize anyone in his line of vision. The burn of the witch brew going down wasn’t pleasant, but it helped. Helped him to forget, forget his nervousness around vampires, forget his fucked up magic. Forget that he wasn’t a whole witch, wasn’t complete, would never be.

* * *

Somewhere into his third drink, a hand tapped him on the shoulder. If it weren’t for the witch brew humming in his veins, he might have noticed the increase of a familiar buzz in his head. As it was, he let his head slide down onto the table, and waved a lazy hand in the person’s direction. “What took you so long Donghyuck? I don’t know anyone here, and the drinks taste shitty.” He sounded whiny sure, but a drink or two could excuse that. Probably.

“Sorry Renjun, it’s not Donghyuck. It’s me, Chenle.”

Renjun sat up so fast he almost fell out of his chair. The vampire sat down beside him, mouth curved slightly in amusement.

“Hope you’re not disappointed.”

Chenle was the first vampire friend he’d made. Renjun hadn’t wanted to be friends with him – he didn’t want to be thought of as lunch if the vampire found out about his human side – but Chenle barely felt like a vampire. He didn’t drink blood in public, his aura was light, and he lacked much of the natural grace most vampires had. Renjun had gotten some good laughs seeing him walk into immobile objects. And the strangest part about the vampire was that he’d wanted to be friends with Renjun.

It wasn’t common for vampires to be friends with witches outside of the magical prodigies and social butterflies (or the two rolled into one like a certain friend abandoner Renjun doesn’t care to name), let alone an exceedingly below average witch, so Renjun had been suspicious. Rightfully, in his opinion. Though he did feel a little bad that it had taken so long for Chenle’s sincerity to thaw his defenses.

As he’d gotten to know Chenle better, he came to realize that Chenle didn’t care much about breaking social norms. Maybe it was because, like Renjun, Chenle was a jigsaw piece that didn’t quite fit into the puzzle of a society he grew up in. In that way, they understood each other. It helped that they had the same bad taste in jokes, and could complain to each other about failing at some basic witch or vampire skill they were supposed to have been born with. He found it much more satisfying than complaining to Donghyuck, who had come out of the womb with all the skills he needed and then some.

“No, you’re much better than that loser Donghyuck,” Renjun said.

“That’s no surprise,” Chenle responded dryly. He and Donghyuck didn’t quite get along. They’d had a few stiff conversations when they ran into each other while hanging out with Renjun, but otherwise they ignored each other. It might have had to do with the time in their previous intermediate-level academy when Donghyuck decided it was a good idea to pull down Chenle’s pants in front of his entire class. This was before Renjun had known either of them. It had turned out to be a good idea for Donghyuck in terms of preteen social currency. Not so much for Chenle.

Chenle had likened the intermediate-level academy to middle school, so that Renjun, who had gone to a normal human middle school, could understand. All of the intermediate-level academies in the region funneled into the same upper-level academy they all now attended.

Renjun wished his two closest friends could get closer to each other, but a small part of him liked that someone wanted his attention more than Donghyuck’s.

“Where is Donghyuck anyway?” asked Chenle.

“Probably still back near the entrance,” Renjun said. “There was a group of strong vampires there, and while we were there, one of them – I think his name was Jeno – got angry for some reason. I left to find drinks, but you know Donghyuck loves watching that type of stuff.”

Chenle’s expression darkened. “Ah yeah, I heard about that. That was bad.”

“Bad? What happened?”

“Nothing happened yet, I suppose. But everyone’s tense now because he’s pissed. I’m not sure if you know, but Jeno is a really big deal among vampires. He’s kind of crazy strong. Well, I guess his friends that always hang with him, Jaemin and Jisung, are also crazy strong. But Jeno’s crazy strong and from one of those oldest purest bloodlines, just a little more pure than Jaemin’s or Jisung’s, so everyone’s on extra high alert. Not that it should matter, and not I care about that, but vampire society sure does.” From the way Chenle’s jaw set, Renjun could tell this wasn’t comfortable for him to talk about. “You wouldn’t want to mess with any of them.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that impression from Donghyuck.”

“Yeah, well, some idiotic, and probably suicidal, vampire challenged him. Though I don’t know anyone who would be stupid enough to do that. Actually, let me correct myself. Definitely suicidal.”

Renjun blinked. “I didn’t see anyone challenge him or anything.”

“Oh.” Chenle laughed and patted Renjun on the shoulder. “Sometimes I forget you aren’t a vampire.”

Renjun gave him an unamused look. “Really.”

Chenle shook his head. “I’m serious. I mean, not like a vampire exactly. Just that most witches feel a little different from you.”

“Uh, what do you mean by feel?”

“Hmm, how to explain this? Witches have an aura too, at least to vampires. Hard to explain but they feel really flashy, I guess from the magic? That’s how vampires can tell which witches are the strong ones. But you don’t feel flashy – I can’t get much of a feeling from you.”

“Oh, ok.” There was another part he didn’t understand though. “And that’s like a vampire how?”

“Vampires learn how to shield our auras from each other when we’re young, so most of the time you won’t feel much, and definitely not the full aura unless the vampire wants you to or you’re really good at bypassing mental shields.”

Renjun stared hard at his cup. “So I have so little magic a vampire can’t tell I’m a witch.” Just another artifact of his half-human nature. Not that Chenle knew he was half-human, but the reminder still stung.

Chenle looked stricken. “That’s not what I meant—”

“No, I know. It’s interesting that I can blend in with vampires though.” Renjun kept his tone light, but it wasn’t hard to hear the undercurrent of bitterness. Witch brew did that to him.

Chenle seemed eager to change the topic. “Anyway, the vampire that challenged Jeno is so screwed. He didn’t just challenge him, he challenged him and disappeared.”

“Changed his mind, I guess? I would, if I were him and saw that.” Renjun remembered the dark amber eyes and shivered.

Chenle shook his head again. “Vampires don’t do that. You don’t challenge someone unless you’re ready for a serious fight. Even trying to back down is, I don’t know, kind of like running away after throwing the first punch. It’s wrong.”

Renjun didn’t exactly get it, but he nodded. “I still don’t remember anyone challenging Jeno.” Not that he was the most reliable when he barely remembered anything other than the overwhelming auras.

“Oh sorry, forgot to explain. We usually challenge each other with our auras, not our fists.” When Renjun looked at him blankly, he added, “It’s like a mental punch.”

With a sinking feeling, Renjun recalled pushing his energy against the vampire’s aura and feeling it shrink back.

That couldn’t have been it, right?

“Say Chenle, hypothetically, can a witch challenge a vampire?” Renjun asked.

Chenle laughed. “You ask the funniest questions, Renjun. I’ve never heard that happen before, and I doubt it. Didn’t you tell me witches can’t even feel vampire auras? How would you challenge something you can’t feel?”

Renjun swirled his drink around in his cup, and tried to laugh too. If it sounded a little strangled, Chenle didn’t seem to notice. “That’s true.”

Chenle paused for a moment, eyes unfocusing. “Yeah, okay I’ll check it out,” he mumbled. His eyes then snapped back into focus. “Sorry, that was Jisung. He wants me to help find the vampire that messed with Jeno.”

It always took Renjun a moment to realize when vampires were talking with each other telepathically. The only sign was the dull, unfocused look that came over them.

“I didn’t realize you were friends with Jisung,” Renjun said.

The vampire stared at him incredulously, as if he didn’t believe the words that just came out of Renjun’s mouth. “I’m not,” he said. There was something dark in his gaze that Renjun didn’t recognize.

But the look passed. Chenle turned away. “They’ve been dragging a bunch of people into this search, but I don’t know how it will help when only Jeno can recognize the vampire’s aura. Jisung thinks it’s one of these uppity second years he knows, so he wants me to gather them and bring them over.”

Chenle stood up to go, but without thinking Renjun grabbed his arm. The next words escaped his mouth before he could stop them. “Don’t leave me.”

The warmth and dullness of the witch brew had only intensified his feeling of being alone in a crowd of strangers.

And vampires.

The witch brew this time felt extra strong, and he felt stupid for not checking if someone had infused magic in it. Most of the time witches were too lazy to do that, and if they did they would charge premium for it, so he hadn’t bothered. Plus, Donghyuck could tell. Donghyuck would’ve warned him if he hadn’t decided the fight was more important. Damn him. Donghyuck loved the magic brews, but Renjun didn’t react well to them. Already, he felt the telltale signs. The energy inside him pulsed harder, the edges flowing outward erratically. The dark lines on the surface, which usually flickered in one place, started to ooze across the energy like eels swimming through a viscous liquid.

Chenle looked surprised. Though vampires didn’t think much of physical contact and treated soft touches, tangled arms and legs, even entwined bodies like nothing, witches were less open. Physical contact was conducive to magic.

A fact that in his haze Renjun had conveniently forgot.

Against Renjun’s will, a few strands of energy flowed out his fingers around Chenle’s wrist, and the vampire snatched away his hand as if burned.

“Renjun, what the hell? That hurt.” Chenle turned toward him with a mixture of hurt and confusion in his eyes. Renjun felt his stomach drop as a bruise formed around Chenle’s wrist. No, not a bruise. The black shape had clearly defined lines, and stood out like a tattoo on Chenle’s pale skin. A chain of thorns. 

“Sorry,” Renjun croaked. “So sorry. I didn’t mean to.” His magic was throbbing like mad, energy jumping wildly toward his fingertips. He clenched his hands into fists. He wouldn’t let more of it escape.

“Renjun, what is this?” Chenle asked, a slight edge of panic in his voice. The panic rose. “I can barely feel my own aura.”

“I-I don’t know.” At Chenle’s look of pure panic, Renjun blurted out, “But I’ll-I can fix this.”

Even in his panic, Chenle must’ve seen Renjun’s uncertainty and the sway of his drunkenness, but he held out his arm. Renjun felt a surge of guilt. Who else would’ve let Renjun work magic on them in this state? Even Donghyuck would’ve known better. He supposed Chenle didn’t know. The right thing to do would be to find Donghyuck and get him to fix it, but Renjun didn’t know if they had the time. And he didn’t know if Donghyuck had the answer to this strange thing his magic had done. He had to fix this.

Renjun closed his eyes. He could feel his magic circling Chenle’s wrist.

_Please._

He reached out and touched the tendrils of his magic. _Come back._ He pulled, hoping his magic would obey him, hoping that Chenle wouldn’t hate him if it didn’t. For once his magic was willing. It shot back toward him and slammed into his chest, knocking the breath out of him.

He toppled from his chair toward the floor.

“Renjun!” Renjun noted with satisfaction as he fell that the black thorns had disappeared from Chenle’s wrist. His friend tried to catch him, but wasn’t fast enough.

Renjun hit the floor. The fall wasn’t hard, but with his head spinning from the brew he wasn’t sure he could get back up. He rolled onto his back with a groan.

Chenle knelt by him. “You ok?” Renjun could see the questions in his eyes, but Chenle didn’t ask any other questions.

“I think I had too much,” Renjun said with another groan.

Chenle chuckled weakly, but his laughter cut off abruptly. His eyes widened. “Your aura… It’s—”

The only warning Renjun got was the crushing aura that washed over him like an ocean tide. A hand grabbed him by the collar and dragged him up from the floor. He found himself face to face with a familiar sharp jawline and catlike eyes.

Jeno.

“Found you.”

The vampire tossed him like a paper doll toward the wall. So effortless he felt as if he were flying. Renjun felt a sharp pain in his side as he hit the wall and slid to the ground, gasping for air. He curled in on himself as Jeno walked toward him.

“Not so tough now, huh? You hid your aura for long enough,” Jeno spat.

A small part of Renjun that was clearly malfunctioning as a result of mixing witch brew and head trauma, and not at all sane, followed the curve of the vampire’s lips as he stalked closer, noted the vampire’s stupidly handsome face despite eyes full of fury. Renjun shut the thought out immediately, furious with himself. _How very like a human._

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Chenle waving his hands and shouting. The vampire looked like he wanted to run over, but someone had an arm around him, holding him in place. Some others had surrounded them, and if Renjun wasn’t half out of his mind from witch brew and pain, he would have cared about the onlookers.

His head spun, and he leaned his side into the wall as the vampire approached, wishing he could melt into it. It wasn’t the first time he wished he could disappear. Too bad that was a higher level magic.

Jeno knelt by him and gripped Renjun’s chin none too gently. Renjun could feel the bruises forming. He wouldn’t be a pretty picture the next day. Assuming he even made it to the next day.

“Someone like you shouldn’t even think about challenging me. What a waste of my time. What family are you from?” Jeno’s voice was laced with disgust. His face was close enough that Renjun could almost count the dark lashes rimming his eyes.

Family? Renjun couldn’t respond, confused by the question. In his muddled mind, some thoughts circled around his head like goldfish, but they didn’t make sense to him and they didn’t make it out his mouth. _My mom’s from China? My last name’s Huang?_

The hesitation was a mistake. Jeno’s eyes narrowed and his grip tightened, fingers drawing close to Renjun’s throat. Renjun couldn’t tell if it was his heart or his magic that was drumming against his chest.

“Answer me.” Jeno’s breath was hot against his face, and Renjun burned as his magic ran through his veins. Restless.

Renjun knew he had to say something, but his voice caught in his throat. The vampire’s stare made him feel like a mouse before a cat. Or even less than that – an ant before a child with a fondness for fire and little more than indifference for the things it burned.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out.

“I’m sorry,” Jeno repeated in a mocking voice. “I’m sorry to be wasting my time too. Answer the damn question.”

Renjun’s brain connected the dots slowly. Jeno was asking what vampire family he belonged to. As if Renjun knew anything about vampire families.

At last, he spoke, though his hesitation made no difference. The truth was the only thing he could have said. “I’m not a vampire.” The words came out a whisper, and he was not sure if Jeno would hear him. From the way he stiffened, he did.

Jeno’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t lie to me.” But even as he said that, Renjun could tell from the slight loosening of his grip that he could feel the truth in Renjun’s words. Or if not from the words, from the bruises forming on Renjun’s skin, bruises that wouldn’t form so easily on even the weakest vampire. From his weakness, which, Renjun thought bitterly, he didn’t even have to play up.

In his bitterness, the next words came out easily. “I’m a witch. Can’t you tell?”

Anger shifted to confusion, and back to anger. Jeno turned his head back toward the crowd of onlookers. Toward Chenle, who Renjun now realized had been shouting that Renjun was a witch, and who had been forced back from the fray by Jisung. That was confirmation enough.

Jeno swore and let Renjun go. As angry as he was, fighting a witch was below a vampire of his status.

Renjun slumped to the floor. He welcomed the cold of the floor against his body. His magic itched below his skin, expanding, boiling just beneath the surface. Choking the air out of his lungs, replacing it with heat.

 _Breathe,_ he told himself. This wasn’t the first time he’d felt this way. He’d had a magicked witch drink before. Though not multiple, and not with a vampire beating him up in the process. He focused on the coolness of the floor, but it didn’t quell the rising heat in his body.

He heard a shout, though it felt far away. Then the same familiar voice, closer, worried. Questioning if he was okay, shortly followed by a familiar pair of hands hauling him to his feet. “Thanks,” he murmured. “I’m fine.” He leaned against Donghyuck, who despite his assurance started sending tendrils of magic to heal his bruises. Renjun’s magic crackled angrily at the intrusion, but he pushed it down as much as he could. Healing was never comfortable, but he’d feel better after. And with Donghyuck’s deft touch, he could already feel the aching in his side and around his chin dulling.

Jeno shot Renjun an unreadable look before walking away, back toward his friends.

Renjun felt relieved. Despite his luck, he’d gotten out of this relatively unscathed. Now Jeno would go back to doing whatever it was he and his friends did, forget Renjun existed, and both of them could pretend this hadn’t happened.

Donghyuck had other ideas. “Hey asshole, where do you think you’re going?” Donghyuck shouted. Renjun felt a ripple of shock go through the onlookers. Jeno stopped. Donghyuck probably would have continued with a string of profanity, if Renjun had not covered his mouth. Donghyuck made a muffled sound of protest, but Renjun ignored it.

“Let’s just go,” he hissed.

“You’re just going to let him—”

Jeno had turned around, and though he didn’t show it on his face, Renjun thought he could feel the murderous intent churning in Jeno’s aura.

“Let’s. Go.”

He wasn’t about to let Donghyuck get them both killed in public. Twenty was much too young to die, especially when he couldn’t yet make a single damn flower grow from that damned flowerpot.

He didn’t remember much after that. Jeno must have let them go because he remembered making it out of the party with Donghyuck, and if half of that was Donghyuck carrying him out, he didn’t recall. Chenle probably checked in on him, he remembered worried eyes and the sound of Donghyuck and Chenle arguing. Though that may have been a memory from a different time.

What he did remember was the stench of vomit as he retched his guts out into the toilet. He remembered the sour taste in the back of his throat, and Donghyuck’s hand massaging his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks for reading, if you got this far. I really appreciate it :)  
> So this mess happened because I wanted to throw witches and vampires together, and no one's around to stop me...so... Maybe I'll add in other things too later, we'll see. 
> 
> This is my first fic! It'll mainly be centered around the dreamies. Other characters and relationships other than those in the tags may show up eventually, and I'll up the rating if it's needed, which may or may not happen. Developments are likely to happen veryyyy slowly, so letting you know in advance if that's not your cup of tea.


	2. the botany club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The botany club was a farce, and Renjun regretted the day he let Nakamoto Yuta talk him into joining.

It wasn’t a surprise when Renjun woke up the next morning with a pounding headache and red marks on his face and side. He supposed he should have been grateful that he’d faced one of the strongest vampires in their grade and come out with little more than bruises. Plus the hangover, though that wasn’t the vampire’s fault. But it was hard to feel grateful when he thought of the stares he would get from his classmates.

Donghyuck burst in from the living room, bright-eyed as ever, as if he hadn’t also drank more than a healthy amount of witch brew and stayed up until the early morning. “You look like shit,” he said cheerily. “Want some tonic?”

Renjun winced at the noise but gratefully accepted the tonic. Donghyuck’s homebrewed tonics were made with questionable ingredients at best – Renjun had asked once but he didn’t remember much past rabbit’s foot and elephant nostril hair, and at that point he’d been sure Donghyuck was messing with him – but they worked. They worked better than any store-bought variants Renjun had tried. The only thing Renjun hadn’t been able to figure out was how Donghyuck tested them, since he’d never seen Donghyuck hung over.

Renjun laid back in bed, feeling the headache start to subside. His sheets enveloped him like a cloud, and he welcomed it, letting himself sink in deeper. He was ready to float back to sleep when Donghyuck’s voice interrupted.

“Better be ready soon.”

Renjun opened one eye, only one because glaring at Donghyuck wasn’t worth the effort of both, and fixed it on Donghyuck.

“Club activities, remember?”

Renjun groaned and rolled over. He had forgotten.

“You didn’t think I was giving you my precious tonic for nothing, did you?”

“I thought it was out of the goodness of your heart,” Renjun grumbled. “Forgot you don’t have one.”

So much for his Saturday in bed.

* * *

The botany club was a farce, and Renjun regretted the day he let Nakamoto Yuta talk him into joining. If it was up to him, he wouldn’t have joined a club at all, but in the words of the academy administration, in order to “facilitate bonds and foster goodwill between the future leaders of day and night” it was mandatory to join at least one club. That being said, while all clubs were open to any student, a decent number catered specifically toward either the witch or vampire population.

The larger clubs mostly had a good mix of witch and vampire. These included the most popular clubs, which were the sports, performance, and fighting clubs, as well as general hobby clubs like art and music clubs. Most of Donghyuck’s vampire friends were from his music club that had spent most of its budget on an extra large bean bag chair and did covers of 90s boy band songs. “They may be the devil’s spawn but they’ve got the voices of angels,” Donghyuck liked to say.

Renjun hadn’t bothered to look much at those clubs. He wasn’t anywhere close to a “future leader” and he didn’t plan to be, so he preferred to limit his interactions with vampires. Being cautious didn’t hurt. Their auras were distracting, anyhow.

The vampire-targeted clubs had taken up most of the west side of the club fair. There had been some clubs about aura shielding, aura battling, hunting, and other activities Renjun didn’t know much about. One of the least popular of these tables had a single hapless vampire trying and failing to catch the eyes of incoming first years, and a sign that read “Drinking animal blood – pave the way to a sustainable future. Join to find out which substitutes will give you the nutrients you need!”

All Renjun had been looking for was a club where he didn’t need to cast magic. He hadn’t thought it was too much to ask for. But apparently, finding a witch-targeted club that wasn’t focused on casting magic was very difficult.

Enough so that when Yuta approached him with a disarming smile and described the botany club as a “place where we learn about good plants for brewing potions, low time commitment and you learn a lot of interesting facts they don’t teach you in class”, Renjun had signed down his name without a second thought. Yuta had wagged his eyebrows as he said “brewing potions”, and in retrospect Renjun should have paid more attention to his body language, but he’d been sold as soon as he heard “low time commitment”. A club where he could sit around and listen to plant facts sounded like as much as he could have hoped for. He could even see himself enjoying it, since despite his lack of magical skills, he did like learning about magic.

Donghyuck had joined with him, on the pretext of “we don’t have any of the same classes this year, when will I see you?” Which was stupid, since they lived together. Renjun suspected that Donghyuck had known about the botany club to start with, and being a self-absorbed little piece of dung that liked to see his friends suffer, had decided to leave Renjun in the dark.

So here he was with Donghyuck, gathered with several other bleary-eyed students that stumbled over their own feet as they trudged up to the edge of the forest behind campus. Renjun had pulled on his thickest sweater and a thicker jacket on top of that, but a night of puking and getting tossed around by a vampire had left him shaky and he couldn’t seem to get rid of the chill in his bones.

“Remind me why this always has to be scheduled at an ungodly hour in the morning,” he muttered.

“It’s 10 am,” Donghyuck said.

“Yeah, exactly.”

On his other side, Chenle nodded in agreement. Chenle wasn’t officially part of the botany club, but he joined from time to time, mostly when Donghyuck wasn’t around. For a vampire 10 am was an ungodly hour, and he looked miserable.

“Look sharp, you little shitheads, we’ve got a big list of botanical goods to collect today.” Yuta appeared at the center of group with a small popping sound.

Show off.

Yuta was a fifth year and one of the first in his year to teleport successfully, a fact he didn’t let anyone forget. Renjun would’ve liked to point out that Yuta’s familiar was a hawk, and witches with bird familiars always had the easiest time teleporting, but then he’d probably get sent to find some obscure plant halfway up the mountain.

Yuta was the president of the botany club, as well as one of the most promising fifth years in the attack magic specialization. If he could find a pair that he didn’t drop within a few months, he’d be on the fast track to joining one of the elite squadrons after graduation. In Yuta’s opinion, it wasn’t his fault his previous pairs couldn’t keep up. As a completely unbiased third party, Renjun thought it was the arrogance they couldn’t keep up with, rather than the skill.

On the official description, the botany club was an educational space to explore the magical potency and particularities of plants used in brewing potions. Yet to this day, Renjun hadn’t learned a single new thing about plants’ magic properties. Instead he learned how to seek them out in the dense undergrowth of the forest; how to identify them by the shape of their leaves, their scent after a night of rain, the time of year their flowers bloomed; how to play his part in the grand vision of making some extra cash.

By the time they were third years, witches who needed a plant or potion, something a little rare, something unconventional, knew where to go. Submit a request to the botany club, and Yuta would make it happen. “We can get you anything,” he was always saying, in the dark corners of campus where money was the highest law. “Anything.” For the right price.

Yuta pulled out a paper from his pocket, and unfolded it. “Today we’ve got angel hair grass, elephant mushrooms, nightshade berries, black oak bark…” Renjun didn’t listen to the rest.

He knew a patch of nightshade near the base of the mountain. It was further than the others would go, but Renjun didn’t mind. He liked that no one else had found the patch yet, so he didn’t have to worry about it being fully harvested and could continue to go there whenever nightshade was on the list. Which was most months. There was always someone buying poison, it seemed.

Not that Renjun knew for sure. Yuta shared the specific orders with few others. He only allowed certain club members to join him in brewing the potions, but even most of these members weren’t in the exclusive circle that knew where the potions ended up. Donghyuck seemed to be involved in some way or other, but Renjun had never asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

After Yuta read through the list, he made his usual half-hearted effort at pretending to be a legitimate club before letting them disperse. This week’s effort was an announcement about the next club social, disregarding the fact that there had never been a first club social.

As usual, Donghyuck split off from Renjun and Chenle. Outside of club activities, the deeper areas of the forest were off-limits, a ban enforced by one of the lesser training squadrons. So of course Donghyuck made it a point to go exclusively to the off-limits areas, and collect plants that were hard to find and harder to obtain. If some of these plants later ended up in Donghyuck and Renjun’s apartment, no one seemed to complain.

Renjun had tagged along with Donghyuck a couple times, and after a nasty encounter with a flesh-eating vine, had decided that he’d stick with plants that wouldn’t try to kill him.

Renjun and Chenle headed to Renjun’s usual spot, Renjun leading the way. Chenle hadn’t been to this particular patch of nightshade, and in truth it had been a while since he’d come to the botany club at all. Renjun suspected that Chenle had only come to check on him after the previous night, but neither of them mentioned it.

Light filtered through the trees as the two of them headed toward the mountain. Chenle hummed as they walked, but they didn’t talk much. It was too early for the both of them, and Renjun didn’t plan to function until the damned headache was gone.

The worst of it was that he couldn’t get the damned vampire out of his head. He remembered the flashing amber eyes that deepened to a dark brown in fury, the chiseled jawline, the hair that fell in an absurdly unruffled way across his forehead each time he moved, not a strand out of place. But these were extraneous details. He chalked it up to some weird vampire on human effect that made him remember useless details about the vampire’s face.

The part he remembered more clearly, or at least he told himself so, was the aura. The aura weaving in and out of the crowd, fading here, growing there, pulling on their strings with the delicacy of a puppet master. He’d never felt a vampire manipulate his aura so… skillfully.

He didn’t want to admit this about someone who had bruised him up, but it was impressive.

Scarily impressive.

Not that this changed anything. Renjun hadn’t always made the best choices regarding vampires, especially when he was younger and less in control of his human side and puberty-induced human hormones. He’d learned though. Learned to ignore the quickening of his heartbeat, the pulsing of his blood. Learned not to trust his so-called feelings.

He planned on following the most logical course of action, and avoiding the vampire like his life depended on it. It possibly did.

He was so distracted by his thoughts that he didn’t realize they had almost reached their destination. Or that Chenle had stopped walking, a few feet behind him.

Renjun glanced at Chenle, whose face contorted for a moment, mouth drawn into a grimace. His eyes flicked around their surroundings as he tugged up his shirt to cover his mouth and nose.

“It smells here,” Chenle said, voice muffled behind the shirt. “Like bad blood.”

Oh. Renjun felt a twinge of guilt watching his friend shove more shirt over his face. He had forgotten. Vampires had a keen sense of smell for blood (naturally), and they were close to the magical barrier around the academy. The barrier had been erected almost a hundred years ago, back before blood magic had been forbidden. History didn’t remember the names or faces of those who died, but their blood had seeped deep into the ground around the barrier, a taint generations of witches had tried and failed to remove.

“Sorry Chenle, we’re near the barrier. It’s probably that stale old blood smell. I’ll be quick and we can get out of here,” Renjun said.

The nightshade patch was in a clearing just beyond the pine trees in front of them. It was late October, so the field of green leaves would no longer be dotted with dull purple blossoms. In their place, shiny black berries would hang, ripe for the harvest.

Or at least that’s how it should have been.

“No, Renjun.” Chenle’s voice trailed behind him.

He stepped into the clearing.

There was no nightshade. None, as far as his eye could see.

All that remained of the once luscious foliage was bare, blackened ground that stretched across the clearing and past the trees beyond.

“It smells fresh.”

In the center of the blackened ground, surrounded by splatters of dark red, lay a man.

The man lay splayed across the ground, one arm over his chest, the other to his side, twisted to an impossible angle. He was tall and pale, with a tangle of black hair. His face was turned away from them.

For a moment, neither Renjun nor Chenle moved.

Chenle blinked several times, rapidly, as if he had fallen into a bad dream he could awaken from. Though his facial expression didn’t change – vampires were trained from youth to control themselves to some extent – Renjun saw his lips tremble and his shoulders tense.

Renjun felt cold. He realized he recognized the grey tunic with a white insignia, though the white was now stained with splotches of red.

One of the members of a training squadron.

Renjun felt around for any sign of magic, but he felt nothing. All he felt was the uneasiness churning in his stomach. Only duty kept him in place. They couldn’t abandon a member of a squadron. He forced himself to walk toward the man, one slow step after another.

When he reached the man he saw that despite the blood staining the man’s clothes and spread across the ground, aside from the broken arm the man didn’t seem injured. Either the blood wasn’t his, or he had healed fast. The latter could only mean…

Renjun felt for a pulse, though he no longer expected one.

“Is he…?” Chenle asked, and his voice shook almost imperceptibly.

Renjun shook his head. He could feel barely, just barely, the softest hint of the man’s aura from where he touched him on the wrist. His unease grew. If Chenle couldn’t tell, the man didn’t have much time left.

“I think… he’s still alive. I don’t see any injuries. You have to go get someone, Chenle. Yuta or Donghyuck or one of the professors if you can find them.”

Chenle looked at Renjun, an unspoken question in his eyes.

“I’ll try to keep him alive until then.”

* * *

Chenle ran. He ran faster than he remembered running ever before in his life. He’d always liked running. It helped him clear his head.

A clear mind didn’t help much now because it only made it clearer what he had to do. He’d been avoiding it, but it was an emergency and he had no excuse.

He knew Renjun hadn’t, but he had recognized that familiar silhouette of the man lying on the ground. It made sense, Renjun wasn’t a vampire, he wouldn’t know. It was someone Chenle used to see often, before things had gone sour for him and his family.

It was Doyoung, Jeno’s half-brother.

It had taken a while for him to recognize Doyoung, longer than it should’ve. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to. He wasn’t used to seeing Doyoung like this, lying on the ground. Limbs twisted, body motionless. The Doyoung in his memory had been smiling and very much alive, teasing Jeno as only an older sibling could and getting away with it because Jeno would complain about it but he didn’t really mind. Chenle had thought he secretly liked the attention, since his brother hadn’t had time to spare much of it. He’d been in training a lot of the time. Though this Jeno in his memories, too, had been different.

Reluctantly, Chenle felt for the link between him and Jisung. It was usually shut tight on his end, and he had once promised himself he would never be the one to cross the barrier he set up between them. He would let Jisung communicate through the connection to him, but he would never initiate. Not anymore. This was different, he told himself. This was an emergency.

Jisung didn’t bother to connect to him either, aside from when he wanted to get Chenle to help out with something. Their link had become thin and tenuous, but even so Chenle could not refuse a command from Jisung. The call was too strong.

Their link hadn’t been proper. It was too unbalanced. With the two of them, what else could it have been like? There had been a few times when Chenle had come close to getting rid of the link altogether. It wouldn’t have been difficult, not with their link stretched as thinly as it was after years of intentional neglect, but something held him back from snapping off that last thread.

_“Brothers, not by birth, but by blood.”_ It was the oath they had sworn to each other when they had created the link, when they were too young to understand what it meant.

He reached out. _Jisung._ It was strange that it still felt so familiar, so easy, to reach through the link.

The response was instant. He felt the aura of the other vampire fill his senses, tinged with confusion and something else Chenle couldn’t quite place. Probably annoyance.

_Chenle? Why are you awake?_

Jisung sounded tired, and Chenle felt the slightest hint of guilt that he’d woken up the other vampire in the middle of the day. After the mess at the party the night before, and their attempt afterward to diffuse Jeno’s anger by pounding back bottles of alcohol-infused blood, Jisung couldn’t have gotten much sleep. There were several witches who would’ve volunteered their blood to Jeno, but Jeno hadn’t been in the mood for more witches then.

 _Botany club._ He tried to hide the memory of meeting Renjun from Jisung, but he must have failed because Jisung was quiet, his aura thrumming with silent displeasure. Jisung didn’t approve of the witch, whose magic was too weak to be of use to a vampire, and he didn’t bother to hide it from Chenle. Not that they could hide much, with the link open like this.

Jisung must have felt Chenle’s distress too, because his voice suddenly became demanding.

_What’s wrong?_

If Chenle didn’t know better, he would almost have thought Jisung was worried about him. But Jisung knew Chenle wouldn’t contact him for a personal problem. Chenle projected the image of Doyoung across the link, the vision of blood and the twisted body still fresh in his mind. He felt Jisung recoil in shock.

 _We’re in the forest near the barrier._ He projected the coordinates, though he could feel that Jisung was already moving.

_I’m coming._

_Jeno’s family needs to know. And the elders._

Chenle tried helplessly to persuade Jisung to bring some of the elders, but he knew it would be fruitless. Even if they barely talked now, even if he kept the link closed, he knew Jisung too well. Jisung was afraid of nothing. He’d bring Jeno, and maybe Jaemin, and be sure that the three of them were enough for any situation.

Chenle snapped the link closed, ignoring the discomfort of closing the connection. He had sent the message, and that was all he could do for Jeno.

He suddenly felt very alone and very tired.

Remembering what Renjun had asked of him, he kept running, searching for Yuta and Donghyuck. As much as he hoped Donghyuck would get kicked out of school, the witch’s healing skills might be Doyoung’s best chance.

* * *

Renjun put a hand tentatively over the man’s heart and closed his eyes. Though he had told Chenle he would try to keep the man alive, he had been taken aback at the hopeful look that flitted over his friend’s face.

Healing wasn’t Renjun’s forte. Renjun’s forte was more along the lines of falling asleep in class, pretending to cast magic while really having Donghyuck do it for him when the professor’s back was turned – he had gotten quite good at that – and, as of two days ago, blowing up flowerpots. It might not have been the best track record to face an unconscious vampire gravely close to winking out of existence.

Pretty much all the healing techniques witches considered worthy of being categorized “healing” required precision, focus, and a delicate touch. Even sealing a paper cut required no small amount of careful magic manipulation to reconnect the veins and meld together the broken skin. It was near an art form in some circles.

Which meant that Renjun opted for the next best thing his abilities could provide. He couldn’t do much to mend the broken arm or to stitch together any internal wounds, but he could try to help increase the speed of the man’s natural recovery. It wasn’t healing exactly, but it would have to do. It was much simpler than healing and only required an energy transfer, which even Renjun usually didn’t have much issue with.

There was the small detail that he’d never tried it on a vampire before, though the textbook had said it should work the same way.

Renjun pushed his senses into the vampire’s body, feeling for his core. For witches their core was their magical energy, and for vampires their core was a different energy that fueled their aura. Usually it wouldn’t be easy to find a vampire’s core, since it would be shrouded in layers of vampiric aura. It wasn’t a good sign that Renjun barely felt any resistance from the man’s aura as he delved in deeper.

He found the core easily enough, more easily than he should have. One look, and he realized that energy transfer wouldn’t help the man. It wasn’t the dull energy he was expecting from a dying man. The man’s energy blazed bright. The man should have been in good health, great health even.

And he would have been, if it were not for a lattice of black thorns surrounding the energy, caging it within.

Renjun watched the flickering black thorns cautiously. They didn’t feel dangerous, but he knew better than to trust his senses too much. He reached out a tendril of his magic toward the thorns, to feel for any weaknesses. He only meant to touch it.

The moment his magic touched the thorn cage, it shuddered once, twice, then shattered.

The fragments of the cage flew at his magic. He ducked back, his magic rushing back toward himself, but the fragments followed him, and they were faster. They stabbed into his magic.

He expected the sharpness of knives cutting into him. The fragments had looked sharp as broken glass. Instead, where they touched his magic, they sank in partway and burned.

He pushed himself away from the man with a scream.

It burned. It burned so much.

He curled into a ball on the ground. The burning spread across his magic and through his body. The black lines in his magic crackled and darted toward the fragments, and as they moved the heat rose even higher. The heat consuming him was more than his body could hold, he was sure. For several long horrible moments he thought he would burn to ashes, a tower of flame in the sky, and for several longer horrible moments he wished he would. But at last the feeling subsided.

The dark lines in his magic began to intertwine with the fragments, curling around them, dark vines on darker trees. As his magic curled around them, the fragments seemed to melt into the dark lines. Soon he could not tell they had been there, aside from the dark lines in his energy looking slightly larger than they had before. They hummed with a strange contentedness.

He gingerly felt at his magic, and it felt normal. He wasn’t sure what had just happened, but he decided to file it away for later. It wasn’t the time. He would ask someone about it eventually, though he wasn’t sure his source of knowledge on all things magic, namely one Lee Donghyuck, would have the answers on this one.

He inspected the vampire on the ground. Some color had returned to the vampire’s face and he could feel the vampire’s aura much more clearly, though it wasn’t as strong as it should have been. He reached out a hand to feel the vampire’s core again—

With a sense of déjà vu, he felt a hand on his collar, dragging him up from the ground. He found himself face to face with the vampire he had been trying not to think about.

“What are you doing here?” Jeno’s eyes were dark, with anger and an unexpected undercurrent of… fear? Renjun could feel the same currents of anger and fear running through Jeno’s aura, though Jeno kept his aura tight to himself this time instead of pushing it at Renjun.

Renjun didn’t have a chance to question why Jeno had appeared out of nowhere. He was too busy scrabbling at the hands holding him up, making it difficult for him to breathe. Jeno must have realized his struggle because after a few moments, his grip loosened.

“How the hell am I supposed to tell you when you’re choking me?” At least that’s what Renjun wanted to say. If he had been Donghyuck he would have, but he liked to think he had more control of what came out of his mouth. He settled for, “What are you doing here?”

It came out as more of a strangled whimper.

“Drop him Jeno. Chenle said they were together when they found Doyoung.” A voice spoke up behind Jeno, and Renjun realized there were two other vampires behind Jeno. The one with the blond hair he recognized as Jisung and the brown-haired one as Jaemin. The one called Jaemin flashed a reassuring smile at him and placed a hand on Jeno’s shoulder.

Renjun felt a brief twinge of annoyance that Chenle hadn’t told him he’d called other vampires, but they hadn’t had much time to react in the moment. He hoped he’d also called someone else, and that he was coming back, so that Renjun wouldn’t be left alone with the three vampires before him.

The corner of Jeno’s mouth twisted downward, but he complied, dumping Renjun unceremoniously.

Great, more bruises.

Renjun rubbed his neck as the vampires looked over the vampire on the ground.

A hand reached out to him. It was the brown-haired vampire. “Sorry about that. Doyoung is Jeno’s brother so he was out of his mind with worry when he heard about this. He overreacted when he saw someone here.” Renjun felt another twinge of annoyance. Jisung couldn’t have told the rest of them earlier that he’d been with Chenle? Then again, considering what had happened the night before, maybe Jisung had been smart not to.

Jeno shot Jaemin a look that Renjun deciphered easily. _I did not overreact_.

Renjun had a hard time imagining Jeno being worried about someone, but that explained the fear that he felt from the vampire earlier.

Renjun stared dumbly at the proffered hand for a moment too long before taking it. It was weird that a vampire was apologizing to him. “Are you ok?” Jaemin asked, as he lifted Renjun to his feet. Jaemin’s palms were dry and larger than Renjun’s. The concern in his voice was just as weird, and Renjun was a bit concerned at how much he kind of liked it. He wanted to claim he felt that way because of the vampire’s aura, but he felt almost nothing from Jaemin. Renjun remembered what Chenle had said about vampires being able to shield their auras from being detected by others. Jaemin was very, very good at it.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Aside from almost choking to death, but he didn’t need to mention that.

“Renjun was it? I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Jaemin. This one here that’s always looking lost or sullen is Jisung” – Jisung scowled at this, proving Jaemin correct – “and this here is Jeno. It’s nice to meet you,” Jaemin chirped. He smiled, a nice smile that seemed to take up half of his face. It was bright, showcased a full set of pearly whites, and looked friendly. Almost too friendly.

This was stepping into dangerous territory for Renjun. He was not interested in being remembered by the vampiric geniuses. “Introduce yourself to someone who can crush you like a bug and get a meal out of it” had never been on his list of priorities. He also wanted to point out that it wasn’t so “nice to meet them”; each time he met them involved more bruises than he’d like.

But Jaemin’s smile was genuine and his words filled with a warmth, so Renjun felt like he had to respond.

“Nice to meet you too,” he muttered. It was only half forced. He brushed himself off, trying to scrape together what dignity he had left. A sense of calm settled over him as he cleaned himself up. Renjun almost relaxed before he realized that the calm he felt came from the soothing waves Jaemin was sending out with his aura. The smile made him more dangerous, Renjun decided. Renjun had been paying attention, and he hadn’t noticed when Jaemin had extended his aura.

“So now that we’re done with introductions,” Jeno spoke in a tone that made it clear he thought they had been a waste of time, “Want to explain why were you touching him, witch?”

So much for dignity. If they’d seen him touching the vampire, they probably probably seen him scream and whimper on the ground. Pushing down the flush threatening to rise to his cheeks, Renjun said, “I was trying to help. To heal him.”

“I didn’t know you were capable of that. From what I’ve heard,” Jisung said. The comment was meant to be harmless, but it stung.

“Glad to know my reputation precedes me,” Renjun spat, with more venom than he intended. Maybe he wasn’t as in control as he thought. The three vampires looked surprised at his tone, as if they didn’t expect him to talk that way. He tried to get back in control. In a calmer voice, he continued, “Even I can transfer energy. It means I was trying to give him some of my energy so he can heal faster. But you are right that since it was me, it might have been useless.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his tone. He really was losing it. “Anyway, you’re wasting your time by interrogating me. Shouldn’t you be trying to help him?”

Renjun was surprised to see a flash of guilt flit across Jeno’s face.

At that moment, Doyoung made a noise. Jeno knelt beside him and grasped his hand.

“Brother, can you hear me?” His voice was tender and desperate.

Doyoung’s eyelashes flickered, and his eyes opened. They were unseeing, staring at the sky.

“He’s gone, he’s gone,” Doyoung half cried, half moaned.

Jeno gripped his hand tighter.

“He’s gone.” A tear rolled down the Doyoung’s face, and his eyes closed again.

* * *

Donghyuck and Chenle arrived shortly after, with a professor and two of the medical staff witches. Renjun didn’t recognize the professor, so he probably taught some of the advanced magic or vampire classes. Probably advanced magic, since Renjun couldn’t feel any aura from him. He couldn’t be sure though, since some of the professors were very good at hiding their auras.

“We would have gotten here faster if it weren’t for Chenle’s bad sense of direction,” Donghyuck made sure to point out.

“My sense of direction? It’s you who had to—”

A glare from Renjun and they went quiet.

The professor did turn out to be a professor of advanced magic, with a specialization in fire-related attack magic. He introduced himself as Professor Seo.

The medical staff witches helped heal the broken arm, placed Doyoung on a stretcher, and started back toward the medical ward, the stretcher levitating behind them. Jeno made to follow them, but the professor stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“We’re going to need to talk to all of you while the memory is still fresh.”

Jeno turned around. “You can’t expect me to—”

“I can, and do expect you to remain here, Mr. Lee. Your brother will receive the best treatment our medical witches can provide, which they will provide with or without you hovering over their shoulders,” Professor Seo said. Renjun flinched at the anger that threaded its way through Jeno’s aura, but the professor seemed unperturbed. The professor couldn’t have noticed, since witches didn’t feel auras and Jeno kept his face stony.

“I’m going to need you to recount what happened here, from when you found Mr. Lee to when we arrived, as best as you can. It may help us work out what happened to Mr. Lee, which will allow us to provide him the best treatment possible.” Left unspoken, but clear to all of them, was the need to prevent the same situation from happening to the other trainees or students. Professor Seo’s gaze softened. “I do understand that this is a shock to all of you, especially you, Mr. Lee, so I won’t keep you too long.”

Chenle did most of the talking. He told the professor of the bad smell, the blood, how he couldn’t feel Doyoung’s aura, summoning the other vampires. Renjun added on that he tried to transfer energy to help heal the vampire. The professor stopped him when he mentioned that he’d felt something dark surrounding Doyoung’s aura.

“A darkness, you say? Can you tell me more about that, about what it looked like or felt like?” Professor Seo looked at Renjun intently.

Renjun wasn’t sure he liked the professor’s hawk-eyed stare. He tried not to squirm. “It looked kind of like a cage. Made of thorns, maybe?”

“A cage of thorns.” Professor Seo scribbled it down in his notebook. “A cage of thorns. That is a bad omen indeed,” the professor mumbled the last part to himself.

“What do you mean?” Renjun asked.

Professor Seo looked a bit flustered, as if he didn’t expect Renjun to hear him. “Oh, nothing for you to worry about. I’m being a bit superstitious – really the details of thorn symbolism in magic are debatable at best. It has some associations with dark magic, but is often also seen in magic for protection and defense. And that would be making the assumption that the darkness you felt is magic-related, which it likely isn’t, since Mr. Lee is a vampire. Now, there is something I must ask, purely for documentation purposes. You didn’t touch that darkness you felt, did you?”

Professor Seo offered a reassuring smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I assure you I’m not assuming you did, though it is perfectly fine if you did do so.”

The question hung in the air. Something told Renjun it was not fine. Perhaps it was the professor’s feeble attempt at acting nonchalant.

“No, professor,” Renjun said. It hadn’t hurt the vampire as far as he could tell and he felt fine, so it wasn’t worth the professor’s scrutiny. “There were gaps in the cage, and I think it was fading. I tried to transfer energy through the gaps, though I’m not sure it did much.”

Jaemin piped up, saying that Renjun’s healing must have done something, because they had felt Doyoung’s aura return. That’s how they had found him and Doyoung so quickly. Chenle agreed that he had been able to feel Doyoung’s aura when they’d come back. None of the vampires mentioned Renjun’s scream or that they’d found him whimpering in a ball on the ground. Perhaps they had missed most of that. Renjun hoped so.

“Hmm, very interesting, Mr…”

“Huang,” Renjun supplied.

Professor Seo fixed him with an eye of scrutiny. Most of the professors knew of him even though he didn’t know them, since he was the only half-human student enrolled. “Ah, Mr. Huang. Practicing, yes? It is good to see that your magical skills are improving. I may see you in my classes yet.”

Renjun flushed. He was practicing, but his yet unachieved goal was to raise his grade in Magic to a B-. He wasn’t sure he could call that improvement.

Professor Seo took a few notes, asked a few questions, and let them off. As they left, Renjun saw the professor kneel and run a finger across the blackened ground with a grim look on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anndd we've it to the end of chapter 2. Many thanks again for reading!
> 
> Also thanks to those of you who've written such lovely comments. Tbh I'm terrible at thinking of replies, so I'm really sorry if I respond super super slowly. But just wanna say that they were heartwarming and made me smile. 
> 
> I'm thinking to try to post once a week? But can't promise, I'm pretty slow and not great at holding myself accountable hahaha... well, we'll see what happens


	3. the week after [part 1]

On Monday Renjun expected the academy to be buzzing with news of Doyoung. The witches of the medical ward weren’t gossips, not professionally at least, but they were pretty close. As close as someone might get while respecting some minimal degree of doctor-patient privacy, anyway.

So it was strange when he tried to listen in on the conversations going around class and heard nothing about a vampire found half-dead in the woods. It was the biggest incident that had happened in his almost three years at the academy. Vampires were hard to injure, and harder to kill. Probably because they were already half-dead to begin with, Renjun supposed. Most of the vampire injuries he had seen from vampire-on-vampire or vampire-on-witch fights had their telltale signs – the lingering traces of magic, the gashes along the arms and legs, the subdued auras, the occasional bite mark on the neck that would cause the vampire to hide at home until it healed. What he had seen in the forest was nothing like that.

He had hoped to hear his classmates’ speculations, but somehow the medical ward witches weren’t living up to their reputation. It was really strange.

It was stranger still that the conversations died down when he looked in his classmates’ direction. The first time it happened he thought it was a fluke, a natural lull in the conversation that happened to match when he decided to turn his head. Then there was a second time. By the third time it happened, he couldn’t pretend it was a coincidence.

He couldn’t pretend he didn’t know what it was about. He fingered the scarf around his neck. The weather outside was bitingly cold, a sign of the winter soon to come, but inside they had turned on the heat lamps. The extra layer made his neck uncomfortably warm, but he couldn’t remove it unless he wanted the bruises around his neck to show. It was bad enough that he couldn’t hide the purpling splotch near his chin. He pulled his scarf up over the lower half of his face.

More of his classmates than he liked were looking at him. He might have been imagining it, but the stares he was getting didn’t seem warm. He would’ve liked to have seen a little, just a bit, of concern. Since he was injured. That deserved some sympathy, right?

Instead he saw a mix of disbelief and bemusement. Maybe it was still his possibly delusional Monday morning brain, but for some reason he thought he saw some hostility too.

Renjun glanced at the clock. 8:05. The professor was late, and so was Chenle. As per usual.

He laid his head down in his arms and closed his eyes. He regretted choosing a class that started at 8 am on Mondays, even if Human Studies was something he could ace in his sleep.

* * *

A group of them pulled Renjun aside after class. They’d waited for the opportune time, after Chenle ran off to one of the vampire classes halfway across campus and before Renjun had decided whether he wanted to skip his next class. They surrounded him in a corner of the campus behind the mathematics building.

Renjun knew this corner. It was almost invisible, except from the western windows of the Human Studies library, which itself was practically deserted except during the wee am hours. The library wasn’t technically open at those times, but somehow it was never locked and so the restriction didn’t stop the students who believed that it was a prime location for a quick make out session. Or not so quick, depending on the student. Renjun didn’t quite get the appeal.

Renjun had never been in the Human Studies library after hours, but he didn’t doubt that he’d gone there more often than any of the after hours visitors. He liked the Human Studies library because it was quiet. He spent a lot of time there doing homework, cozied up to a book, and taking naps. They weren’t supposed to sleep in the library, but after three years the librarian knew him and let it slide.

From his usual spot in the library, he often saw Yuta loitering in this corner of campus, cash disappearing into Yuta’s hands. Renjun had always suspected Yuta’s true skills lay not in attack magic but in the magic of making money vanish. That was an advanced art for certain. He sometimes thought Yuta would look up and see him, but it had not happened so far.

He didn’t expect to find himself in what he’d always thought of as Yuta’s corner.

He recognized a few of the faces in the group. Eunha and Joowon from his year, who he’d never gotten along with because they were, from a purely objective point of view, pricks. They were also among the few in his year that were almost as terrible at magic as he was. The other three he didn’t know the names of, but judging by the lack of marks on their forearms they were also third years, or below.

Renjun found it almost laughable that they’d rolled up their sleeves and crossed their arms to look intimidating. It might’ve worked, if he couldn’t see them shivering from the cold.

“So,” Eunha began. She paused, almost certainly for dramatic effect. Or to annoy him, and if that was her intention, it worked.

“We heard that you messed with Jeno at the party on Friday.”

After that, it took Renjun less than a second to figure out why that would get him cornered in a shady part of campus. Renjun vaguely recalled that Eunha and Joowon were part of a group that was essentially the unofficial fanclub of some vampire on campus. He had never paid too much attention to who the vampire was before, but it didn’t take a genius to deduce now that the vampire was Jeno. The fanclub members attended Jeno’s sports events, sent him gifts, and even went to the semi-annual vampire evaluations to get a glimpse of him. Most of the fanclub members were third years, which wasn’t unusual. Before fourth year, vampires and witches only shared certain interest classes like Art or Human Studies, none of their core classes. These interest classes were often held during twilight hours to accommodate for the differing schedules of witches and vampires. In fourth year, mixed classes would instead be held during these twilight hours, with vampires and witches together in core classes for the first time. From then, there would only be a year until the ever-anticipated pairings in fifth year, and vampires and witches alike aimed to impress.

Not that Renjun had ever seen Jeno impressed by the fanclub. When he’d seen it from a distance, mostly to get the satisfaction of watching Eunha and Joowon get pushed aside by other witches, the vampire’s only acknowledgment of his admirers had been the slight furrow in his brow when any of them dared to get too close.

Renjun waited for Eunha to continue, but one of the others did instead.

“Yeah, we heard that you not only ruined Jeno’s night, you tried to _fucking pick a fight_ with him.” The one who spoke had more muscle than Renjun felt was fair for someone their age – or any age – and a heavyset jaw. He spoke as if ruining an evening for Jeno was one of the gravest sins known to man.

“I didn’t pick a fight with him, do you think I’m an idiot?” Renjun replied. They bristled at his tone, but a couple of them looked at each other, uncertain. They could see the logic in his words. Renjun sucked at magic, sure, but he wasn’t dumb. And you’d have to be dumb to pick a fight with Jeno.

“Then, how did you get the bruises?” Renjun could grow to hate that weasel-like voice of Joowon’s.

“You know how. He attacked me.”

“Attacked you?” muscle-guy scoffed. “Don’t think we’ll believe your bullshit. You must have done something wrong.”

Muscle-guy rolled up his sleeves, and Renjun saw what was coming a moment before it happened. He only had enough time to throw himself to the ground before a bolt of light hit where he had been standing. Smoke rose from muscle-guy’s hands.

Renjun swore. They had someone who could do heat magic with them. From the lightly browned blades of grass where the light hit Renjun could tell it wasn’t strong heat magic, but it would still hurt. And it was more than Joowon or Eunha could do. Which was probably more than he was prepared for.

“We’re going to make you pay for it,” Eunha crowed. One of the others reached for him. He ducked out of the way.

Out of the corners of eyes he saw the others lifting their hands. He didn’t know how long it would take them to start casting magic, but he didn’t care to find out. He launched himself at Joowon, who he knew was inconsistent and could sometimes take entire minutes to cast simple magic.

Joowon’s eyes widened, because the idiot was always unprepared for a non-magical attack. Renjun’s foot caught him in the balls. With a squeal that broke some of the others’ concentration, Joowon toppled to the ground and curled into a ball, hands covering his groin.

Renjun really would have loved to observe his handiwork in more detail, but he couldn’t. He jumped over Joowon and broke into a sprint. The others cursed and yelled at him, but didn’t attempt to chase him. He was pleased to see that they were at the level where they couldn’t focus both on physical movement and casting magic at the same time.

He made it around the corner by the time a couple blasts of energy hit the ground behind him. One of the blasts flung up a rock that hit him in the head. The pain stunned him and brought tears to his eyes, but he tried to focus on the path in front of him. He heard their shouts, and the stamping of feet as they followed in pursuit.

The path intersected with another path, and he turned to the left, went through a patch of trees, and reached a familiar ladder. He pulled himself up one rung at a time until he got to the top, and knocked on the glass door leading into the Human Studies library.

The male sitting at the desk inside looked up from the paper that he was scribbling on. He frowned when he saw Renjun.

Renjun waved at him, trying to pantomime running away, and getting attacked, and please let me in I am being chased by probably definitely crazy vamp-fans.

The male walked over, still frowning, and opened the door a crack.

“You know we’re not supposed to let anyone in from the side door anymore,” he hissed through the crack.

“Sorry Mark, it’ll just be this one last time. Please?”

Mark eyed him skeptically, but after looking around to make sure no one was watching, opened the door wider to let him in. Renjun didn’t know much about Mark other than that he was a fourth year witch, but he saw him often because Mark was the only employee the Human Studies library seemed to have other than the librarian.

“I can’t do this again Renjun. For real this time,” Mark said. He said this every time. As if he read Renjun’s mind, he added, “Yeah, I know I say it every time. But I mean it this time.”

He looked like he had more to say, but his expression shifted from annoyance to concern as he looked at Renjun.

“Are you ok?”

Renjun followed Mark’s gaze to the back of his head. He hadn’t noticed the warm wetness at the base of his skull. He reached a hand behind his head and felt at it. There was a gash where the rock had hit him. He pulled away and his fingers were stained red.

“Yeah, I think so.” The wound didn’t feel deep.

Mark didn’t look convinced. “I think you should go to the med ward.”

Renjun didn’t think this was a med ward worthy situation. He wanted to tell Mark that this was nothing Donghyuck couldn’t fix, but Donghyuck was technically not supposed to be doing healing magic yet, so he kept his mouth shut. Mark took one look at the blood on Renjun’s fingers, and proceeded to drag him to the medical ward.

* * *

The medical ward was pale white, with tall ceilings and wide hallways. During the summer, sunlight brightened the rooms, but now that it was near winter, the ward was perpetually cast with dim blue shadows. Renjun sat in a room with one large window, on a pallet large enough for two of him.

A medical witch-in-training called Ten swiped tendrils of his magic across the gash behind Renjun’s ear. Renjun hissed at the sting.

“Stop squirming and you’ll get this over with faster,” Ten said crossly. The medical witch-in-training didn’t have the gentlest touch. He was one of the fifth years that had been on the fast track to joining a training squadron, since like Yuta he’d had an aptitude for attack magic. He’d surprised everyone when he announced that he was going to pursue the medical field instead. No one knew why. Except perhaps his closest friend Johnny, who was well-known because he was Professor Seo’s son. Johnny had said nothing on the matter.

Whenever Renjun was in the medical ward, which thankfully wasn’t often since Donghyuck had started studying up on healing magic, he ended up under Ten’s less than gentle administrations. He knew there were other witches-in-training, but he had yet to be assigned to any of them. He thought it was unfair he didn’t get a choice in the matter. Renjun suspected Ten treated healing magic like attack magic, more power and efficiency than delicacy.

“You have to relax and let the magic work. I don’t want to be here all day for a scratch.” The medical witches were always busy, witches-in-training included, so they didn’t like to be bothered for small injuries.

Renjun would’ve protested that it was Mark’s idea to bring him here, but he remembered he had something more important to ask Ten.

“How’s the vampire doing?”

Ten looked at him sharply, too sharply not to know anything. “What vampire?”

“The one we found yesterday in the woods. Um…Doyoung?”

“I haven’t heard anything about that.” Which was so unlike Ten, who knew everything about everyone all the time and seemed to make it a mission to keep it that way, that Renjun could only gape at him.

Ten frowned at Renjun’s look of disbelief.

“You’ve heard nothing,” Renjun said.

“That’s what I said, yes. I don’t work in the vampire department.” Ten waved his hand dismissively, a subtle but clear sign that the conversation was over. Renjun swallowed down his questions. If Ten didn’t want to say anything, Renjun wouldn’t be able to get anything out of him, but he marveled that Ten didn’t realize acting like he knew nothing was more strange.

A couple more stinging swipes of Ten’s magic, and Renjun was ushered to the door.

“I would say, hope to see you soon, but that would be a lie,” Ten said, and waved him out.

* * *

Jeno ran a hand through the girl’s hair, trailed it down her face, and let a finger linger on her lips. She trembled under his touch. He knew they liked it when he did this. A touch here or there, a sweet word, in less responsive cases a light push of the aura, and they were putty in his hands.

It was so easy.

It meant nothing to him.

But it was fun and it didn’t hurt. The blood tasted better when they were excited.

It was only a problem if they got attached. Or if he got attached, but that would never happen. The idea of getting attached to his prey repulsed him. His beautiful, sweet, willing prey. He supposed he couldn’t quite call the witches he fed on prey. Unlike humans, they were more or less his equals, but he didn’t like the other words people used for these kinds of relationships – bloodmate or playmate were the common ones. It felt like more than he wanted it to be. He preferred to call them arrangements. That encapsulated what he wanted out of it. A good time, no strings attached, and a clear set of rules that included, “I’m sorry but I’m not going to fall in love with you”, and “No, we’re not going to be friends”.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like the witches he’d had arrangements with. He liked them or something about them, and that was why he chose them, but they always ended up wanting more from him than he could give. It got messy if he stuck with the same one too long. He knew because he’d tried. With a few of them, he’d even thought – foolishly – that they were friends. In the end, the ones he’d stuck with too long had fallen for him, even though after the first few times he’d tell them his rules beforehand and they’d promise they wouldn’t. And even though after that they always said it’s okay, you don’t have to like me back, I’m fine being friends, it was only a matter of time. Okay would become not okay would eventually become I hate you why can’t you change what is wrong with me why don’t you love me? Tears and painful conversations and friendships he’d tried to hold on to and had been too inexperienced to realize were already over. It wasn’t like he wanted to hurt them, but he couldn’t change how he felt.

He didn’t know how Jaemin did it. Jaemin had a plethora of semi-consistent bloodmates that didn’t dislike him or want him as their exclusive lover. They didn’t even dislike each other very much. “We’re all friends,” Jaemin said when asked, with a carefree smile and a shrug. Jeno couldn’t figure it out.

So Jeno made it clear that these arrangements weren’t going to be long-term. When he played around with witches, he didn’t drink blood from the same one for more than a couple weeks, except for a few he knew wouldn’t be an issue.

He hadn’t met with this girl before. He would’ve met with one of the witches he currently had an arrangement with, but he hadn’t eaten in a day and the hunger drove him to speed rather than convenience.

He’d stayed up all day at Doyoung’s bedside in the medical ward. The medical witches had been reluctant to let him in, but when it became clear that he wasn’t going to leave without a team of witches holding him down, they had relented. They didn’t have the time or energy to spare.

It had been hard to see his brother like that, but harder to look away. His brother, who despite not having Jeno’s power, had used his wit and skill and so much hard work to claw his way into a training squadron before anyone else his age. The only fifth year accepted this year, who had bonded his witch pair in less than a month. Now he lay before Jeno, cold and still. Vampires were always cold physically, but Doyoung’s aura felt cold too, without its usual warm vibrance. His pair hadn’t been found. 

Jaemin had found him in the evening still in the same position, sitting by Doyoung’s beside. Jaemin hadn’t said much, but Jeno answered his unspoken question.

“He’s woken up once. The witches put him back to sleep fast because he was still…unstable. I think he recognized me at least.”

Jaemin had seen Jeno’s hands tremble as he spoke. He’d taken a look at the dark circles under Jeno’s eyes, guessed correctly that Jeno hadn’t eaten or slept, and had gently pushed him out of the room.

“At least get something to eat,” Jaemin had said.

Jeno had been too tired to resist, though he had still protested until Jaemin promised to stay with Doyoung until he returned. Jeno had ignored the medical witches’ snide remarks about them being in the way as he left.

So here he was playing it up for a witch he barely knew. A classmate that had been in maybe one of his elective classes. Usually if he was going to drink from a witch, he’d put more thought into the choice. Now though, he found he didn’t care.

He went through the motions almost robotically.

He cupped her chin and pressed their lips together. He heard her sharp intake of breath, felt her arms encircle his neck, but he was more focused on the pulse quickening in her neck. He broke the kiss quicker than usual and moved his lips to hover above the pulse in her neck. Usually he’d enjoy it more, take it further, but he didn’t want to bother.

She made a sound as he sank his teeth into her neck. Then he stopped paying attention to her.

The blood flowed over his tongue, liquid ambrosia when he was so starved. He’d forgotten how much he wanted, no, needed to eat. He made a mental note to thank Jaemin later.

The blood was warm and sweet. A little too sweet for his tastes, but satisfying all the same. She tilted her head back to give him easier access. She’d probably offered blood to a different vampire before. Though she’d claimed she didn’t, she was too familiar with the process.

Her pulse began to slow, and though he wanted more he knew he was pushing the limit.

He pulled away.

She looked up at him, dazed. “That was really good,” she said with a giggle. “The best I’ve had. We should do it again sometime—”

He cut her off. “It was good, but didn’t you say you haven’t shared blood before? I don’t do this with liars.”

Her face fell as she realized her mistake. “Please, I can make it worth your while! How about if I share some magic energy with you? If you’ve never tried, it also feels really good.”

“Doesn’t that hurt you?” Jeno asked, remembering the scream of the witch they’d found with Doyoung, who said he’d shared energy with Doyoung. That witch who he’d thought for a moment of madness was a vampire, who had challenged him somehow, who shouldn’t have been able to challenge him. The strange scene of the witch huddled, trembling on the ground. Then he’d seen Doyoung, and the witch hadn’t mattered.

Confusion crossed her face, though it quickly morphed into a teasing smile that annoyed him. “Aw, are you worried about me? It might sound scary if you’ve never done it before, but energy transfer is easy and won’t hurt either of us. More of the opposite. Let me show you.” She reached up to put her hand on his chest, but stopped at the look on his face.

At the same time, Jeno heard a crunch behind them, a foot stepping on the fallen leaves littering the ground.

He turned around and saw the witch he’d seen too many times over the weekend. Renjun, he remembered Jaemin’s voice saying. The witch’s aura was strange and weak, a candle to the usual flame. The feeling now was closer to a human’s than a vampire’s. How could he have mistaken that for a vampire at the party?

The memory still brought a hot flush of shame and frustration over him. It wasn’t like him to make that kind of mistake.

Renjun must have done something. Some strange magic to imitate a vampire, though Jeno wasn’t sure why any witch would waste their time on that. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time a witch had tried to get his attention with magic. Though from what he remembered Renjun hadn’t been too excited about his attention when he got it. At least he learned quickly.

Jeno saw his recognition mirrored in Renjun’s eyes. Renjun swallowed and Jeno heard his heart rate increase. There was a kind of wistful, longing look in his expression. So he was interested after all. Figures. He knew then that the witch would approach him – they always did, even the shy ones – which was just fine because he had some things to ask.

Jeno waited for Renjun to walk closer. To open his mouth and use the same soft-spoken voice that he’d used with the professor to kiss up to Jeno. To try to get on Jeno’s good side, to ask if they could hang out sometimes or worse if they could be friends. It was annoying, but he could deal with that to get his questions answered. He could even pretend to be friends for a time. He eyed the boy in front of him, taking in his delicate facial features, the black hair that floated over his forehead in the soft stir of the breeze, and the slim long neck that exposed his pulse perfectly. Yes, they could even come to an arrangement.

Instead Renjun blinked and his expression morphed into something more like revulsion, though it didn’t seem to be directed at Jeno His eyes widened. He shot another glance at the two of them like he really would have been much happier not having seen them, backed up with a mumbled “Sorry”, and turned to walk the other way.

Jeno didn’t like that. He’d didn’t usually have trouble predicting witches’ behavior. That rise in pulse combined with the witch’s initial expression, he knew what it was supposed to mean.

Jeno sent out a tendril of his aura, to lure the witch back. Witches didn’t feel vampire auras much, but he’d found it could still help nudge their emotions one way or the other. He didn’t expect to see Renjun stiffen, then start walking faster.

“Wait,” he said. Renjun didn’t seem to hear him.

“Why are you talking to him? Renjun’s not worth your time.” the girl whined, grabbing his arm. By the time he extricated himself from her grasp, Renjun had turned the corner and was out of sight.

* * *

Chenle cast his gaze downward as was respectful. Jisung didn’t do the same, but those from the main families weren’t expected to follow the same level of deference.

The woman in front of him looked at them with a cold gaze. The only sign of her status was the necklace that hung around her neck, a silver chain with a single crescent moon in the center. She looked young, but with vampires appearances were no more than illusion. None of the elders were younger than several centuries.

For an elder, Taeyeon was young, barely passing the third century mark. Yet no one contested her leadership.

Chenle could feel the pressure of her aura, the knowledge and power of centuries pressing down on him. Along with that, the icy disapproval.

Chenle had finished talking. He had recounted the situation with Doyoung from start to finish, and could only wait for her judgment. The moment had too many similarities to the last time he had been in this room, down to the two acolytes kneeling beside her. They stared past him and Jisung as if they could not see them. It was a ruse, for they would memorize all that came to pass, down to the twitch of a hand or the flicker of an eyelash.

Taeyeon’s gaze traveled over Jisung as if he were of no consequence, and stopped on Chenle.

“You saw this, and chose not to report to us first but instead to find a witch.” She spoke without emotion, but Chenle could feel his stomach sink with each word.

Chenle felt Jisung prodding at the link between them, but he forced himself to resist it. He clenched the link closed. He didn’t want Jisung to know how he felt. He knew that Jisung could force the link open if he wanted to, but that he wouldn’t care enough to.

“I believed healing him was more important at the time,” Chenle said.

That seemed to satisfy Taeyeon, because she turned her gaze to Jisung. 

“That is all, Chenle. Jisung, I will speak with you separately.”

It was the dismissal Chenle had been waiting for. He forced himself to head out of the room at a steady pace, but once he reached the point where he could no longer feel Taeyeon’s or her acolytes’ auras, he broke into a swift walk.

The speed helped calm his frayed nerves a little, and he was already running late for his next class.

* * *

In the midst of the all the events of the weekend, Renjun had forgotten about Magic class.

He looked miserably at the flowerpot in front of him. The blackened stump in its center and a few withered petals around it were the only sign that there had once been some semblance of a flower growing within. A crack ran down the side of the pot, and it had turned a dull rust-like color.

He had considered not bringing it at all, if only to avoid the judgment of his classmates, but it had reached the point where his grades were too dangerously low to care about embarrassment.

It looked especially comical next to Donghyuck’s flowerpot.

Renjun glared at the red tulip that had burst forth from Donghyuck’s pot. Three days had passed and the unusually large blossom was as vibrant as when it had first bloomed. Not a petal had wilted.

“I’m doomed,” Renjun groaned. He laid his head on the desk, thinking that maybe not looking at his assignment would make it better.

It didn’t.

Donghyuck looked over at him. “It’s not so bad—Well actually, it’s pretty bad.”

Renjun glared at him. “Thanks for your input, Hyuck.”

“Look on the bright side. At least there’s still a pot,” Donghyuck said.

“Easy for you to say,” Renjun said, gesturing at Donghyuck’s more than perfect tulip.

Donghyuck shrugged with a smug grin that made Renjun want to hit something. “Sorry, can’t help that I’m so good at this.”

The most annoying part was that it was true. Renjun groaned again. “Actually though, do you think he’d give me points for the pot? I need them.”

“I hate to break it to you, but…uh…no. Maybe some points for effort.”

“Ugh, I guessed as much.”

Renjun scanned the room. He saw a few other students with less than stellar flowers, but none with anything remotely like a block of coal. Which was what his resembled more than anything else.

Professor Park walked into the room. He was a young professor who looked no older than 30. There were various rumors circulating around how he got the position, ranging from graduating from the academy at 16 and climbing up the academic ladder thereafter to an epic tale involving a battle to the death with dragons and the humiliation of a vampire elder. Renjun suspected, just a little, that the latter wasn’t true. No one had seen a dragon in decades. And getting away with humiliating a vampire elder was completely unrealistic.

Whatever the truth was, it was clear he was a prodigy. Much like Donghyuck, though Donghyuck claimed he’d never be caught alive doing something as boring as teaching a magic class.

As usual, Renjun heard a small chorus of sighs and giggles ripple through parts of the class as the professor entered the room. A couple students sat up straighter, trying to look more attentive.

Among the student populace, Professor Park wasn’t as much known for his magic skills as for being the professor you’d most want to sleep with. It was a title he’d unknowingly held for three years running. Renjun wasn’t inclined to agree, but he couldn’t deny that Professor Park was more attractive than average. He looked like he’d been chiseled out of rock by some famous sculptor, with a sculpted jawline and a build that happened to be shown off by the stupid polka-dotted dress shirts he always wore. The dress shirts always happened to have the top one or two buttons undone, not enough to be inappropriate, but enough for the fantasies of very bored and very thirsty young adults.

While some of the other students that had done well on the assignment discreetly pushed their flowerpots forward, trying to catch his attention, Renjun shrank in his seat. He imagined that if he tried hard enough to pretend he was invisible, one day he’d succeed. Magic was supposed to be able to do that, anyway.

That day wasn’t today, but at least he’d tried.

Professor Park began by re-explaining the reasons behind the assignment. “Coaxing growth from a dormant seed can be a difficult task, but it’s a great way to learn the basics of encouraging and controlling growth. This will be an important building block for when you all start learning the healing magics next year. Half of healing comes from being able to properly direct your energies into growth.

“Considering the importance of growth in healing, I’m glad to see you’ve all made an effort with this week’s assignment. Why, everyone has gotten a flower to bloom, and regardless of how your flower looks, I would say that means you’ve all crossed the hurdle of taking the first step toward healing.” The professor smiled at the class. Usually this was when Professor Park would’ve gotten a few of the students who did especially well to describe or demonstrate their techniques, but when the professor’s eyes slid across the class, they stopped on Renjun. A small frown stole over his face. “Ah, except, perhaps Mr. Huang.”

Like sharks tuned to the scent of blood, several other students turned in unison to face him. The snickers he heard were more hostile than usual. For not the first time, he cursed the run-in with Jeno over the weekend.

“I’d hate for any of my students to fall behind, so let’s help Mr. Huang out, shall we? You’ve made a very good effort I see, but it’s not quite there, and I do believe we can fix that. Come up here if you please Mr. Huang.” Professor Park waved at him to walk to the front of the class. Renjun did not please, but it was futile to mention that.

Renjun felt his stomach sink as the professor placed a new flowerpot on the floor in the middle of the raised podium. He hesitated a moment too long and the professor waved again, insistent. More heads turned toward him. He pushed himself up from his seat and started moving toward the front. Better not to drag it out. He wasn’t sure how he walked up to the front. His feet felt like stones, the eyes of his classmates pricking him over and over again with tiny little holes until he deflated into mush.

In far too little time, Renjun found himself at the front, taking the steps up onto the stage where Professor Park stood. He took a look at his classmates and wished he hadn’t. The gazes he’d felt on his back were worse from the front. Even the students that usually napped or spent most of class passing notes were paying attention.

The floor suddenly seemed a lot more interesting. While he studied the cracks on the floor and wondered why no one had bothered to fix them in a school that literally taught magic, a strong hand clasped his shoulder.

“Now I will explain and demonstrate the technique, and then you can try, Renjun,” Professor Park said. He sounded encouraging like always, like he had really wanted to see Renjun succeed and was so disappointed it hadn’t happened yet, but don’t worry, surely, sometime, soon, I’ll help you! But Renjun couldn’t help feeling wary around him. Professor Park did seem like he wanted to help. Truly. Renjun just couldn’t help thinking that the professor was a little too oblivious to the effect of singling Renjun out whenever he failed an assignment. He didn’t make any of the others who didn’t do well on their assignments come up to the front. Though none of the others ever managed to fail as spectacularly as Renjun did.

Renjun was reading too much into it, probably. Still, he didn’t appreciate it.

“Growth magic is all about steadiness and control. We start as usual by taking some magic and sending it outward into the object of interest. In this case, the flower bulb. The part after is where it gets interesting, and is what makes growth magic unique. Renjun, would you like to tell us what to do next?”

Renjun thought he heard some snickers. “You have to maintain a connection,” he mumbled.

“Sorry, Renjun, I didn’t hear that. Speak up, don’t be shy. We’re all friends here,” Professor Park said.

Renjun definitely heard snickers this time. “You have to maintain a connection,” he said.

“Didn’t hear that, Renjun,” a student called from the front.

“Yeah, speak up a little, will you?” someone else said. It was Joowon, a nasty smile on his face.

“Looks like some of your fellow students still can’t hear you. One more time please, Renjun,” the professor said.

Renjun gritted his teeth. “You have to maintain a connection and keep sending magic through it.”

“Very good, Renjun! Someone has been paying attention in class.” To his dismay, Professor Park patted him enthusiastically on the back. “Now that may sound easy, but it’s quite difficult in practice. Sending a completely steady flow of magic through this connection can take months or years of practice, but it is very essence of growth magic. As some of you may have noticed, you can still make the flower grow without a very steady, controlled flow of magic, but the growth will often be stunted or unbalanced. You can see how that could be a problem for healing magic, especially when you are trying to regrow bones or muscles.

“With that in mind, I’ll start this one off.”

Professor Park pointed a lazy finger at the flowerpot on the floor. A sprout shot up from the middle of the dirt. The stem extended straight upward, and a flurry of leaves sprouted one by one around it. The growth stopped when the plant was about a foot high.

The class burst into applause. Renjun clapped along soullessly. The professor just had to make it look easy.

“Now you, Renjun. Focus on making a connection rather than power.”

It was weird advice to give when Renjun had never had issues with too much power. Usually his problem was the opposite. Maybe the professor was speaking based on Renjun’s remainder of a flowerpot; perhaps he wasn’t the first student to make that kind of mistake. That made him feel a bit better.

Donghyuck sent him an encouraging thumbs up from the back. It helped, seeing a friendly face among the mostly indifferent and somewhat malicious crowd. He took a deep breath, steeling his nerves, and reached for his magic.

His magic was easy to find, as usual. It seemed like there were more dark lines flickering within it than before, but he wasn’t sure. It was probably the same as usual and he was psyching himself out.

He tried to take a drop of it, but the drop slipped from him before it got anywhere close to leaving his body. A slightly larger drop then. After multiple failed attempts, he got a little magic to leave his fingers and enter the plant, but he wasn’t able to form any kind of connection. The plant stretched up a miserable few centimeters.

This time the snickers dissolved into full on laughter. Renjun saw Joowon in the front, laughing his head off. He wished he could wipe the smile off Joowon’s face with another well-placed foot to the crotch, but alas, that would have to wait for another time. He couldn’t even laugh at Joowon like he usually did, since even he had managed to get some kind of flower to sprout in his pot. It was an ugly thing with wilting leaves and only two petals, but it was still a flower.

Professor Park pounded his hand on the lectern. “Please settle down class. It’s never appropriate to laugh at a classmate, and I’m disappointed to see this kind of behavior from you.” The laughter died abruptly, a recording set on pause. With the class quiet, Professor Park continued cheerily, “We all have different aptitudes. Now, Renjun, I did say not to focus on power, but try using a little more power than that,” Professor Park said.

Renjun thought back to Friday. A handful of magic had been too much, but he needed more than a drop. Half a handful, or a quarter, wouldn’t hurt, surely.

Like on Friday, dipping his hand into his magic and taking a small handful of it was almost easy. Strange. It was less easy than taking a larger handful, because more of his magic than he wanted tried to gather and he had to push it back. He didn’t understand, but his magic seemed to like to stick together, and as long as he was taking more than a few drops, it didn’t fight him like it always had.

He sent the magic at the plant, imagining that it was a picture of Joowon’s dumpy face and that he was going to slash it into pieces. He’d start with the smirk that was plastered on Joowon’s face, and work his way through the nose, the eyes, and end with his questionably dyed hair, blonde tips and all.

It probably wasn’t the best thing to imagine when he was trying to cast growth magic.

Renjun still wasn’t able to maintain a steady flow of magic to the plant. The magic he used jumped from him to the plant, leaving no link he could use to send more.

The plant shot upward. A giant bud formed at the top of the stem, its tip a pale blue that contrasted with the green of the rest of the plant. The bud hung in the air, suspended upward, swaying slightly on a stem too thin to support its weight. Then it turned sideways, and burst open.

The rest happened too fast for Renjun to see clearly. He only saw the petals, clear like icicles, extend toward Joowon’s head. Somehow he knew the petals were sharp as knives, though he couldn’t explain how he knew.

They moved too fast for him to react. It was only the professor’s quick reflexes that saved Joowon’s eyes from being shredded to pieces.

Renjun felt the heat as the professor’s magic shot past his face. With a loud bang, the petals were enveloped in a cloud of smoke. For a second it seemed like that petals would keep growing, but the smoke swirled and became darker. The room grew hot. Renjun felt drops of sweat beading on his forehead. One by one the petals crumpled to ash as if set on fire, though there was no visible flame.

When the smoke cleared, the class sat in stunned silence. Renjun felt himself trembling. He didn’t know why.

Professor Park turned toward him. His smile was gone, and there was a smear of ash on his baby blue shirt with yellow polka dots. His eyes were cold and considering, not at all those of a nurturing professor. He spoke in a low, dangerous voice too quiet for the other students to hear. It was so unlike his usual tone that Renjun wasn’t sure for a moment if it was the professor who had spoken.

“This is impossible. You shouldn’t be able to do something like this. Where did you learn this, Renjun?”

Renjun looked at him, uncomprehending.

“Where did you learn this?”

Renjun continued to look at him.

“Where did you learn the magic to hurt someone? Answer me! I will not ask again.”

Renjun felt his blood run cold. “I don’t understand. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone—”

“You dare say that when you almost killed your classmate?” _Killed?_ Renjun wasn’t sure he was hearing right.

The professor looked intently at him, but seeing Renjun’s stunned expression, he shook his head. “I have half a mind to remove you from this class myself, but it seems you really didn’t know what you were doing.” Then making an effort to regain his composure, Professor Park added more kindly, “You know, I told them teaching a human magic would be a mistake. But over the course of the year, I saw your magic and your efforts, and thought perhaps I was wrong. For a time I thought you were not too different from the others, simply developing slower, so I put extra effort toward your education in an attempt to overcome your inherent disability. However, I have seen today that my initial instincts were correct. Your kind isn’t meant for magic, and this is proof that despite my best efforts, you do not have the control or capability to conduct magic properly. It would be best, perhaps, if you limited your magical education to the basics.” The professor’s eyes grew cold again. “Or I will limit it for you. Let me assure you, if you do anything to harm another student again, I will personally make sure that you never cast magic again.”

Renjun’s next words died on his lips. He felt frozen, unable to speak or move. He’d thought something like this wouldn’t hurt him anymore. It shouldn’t have, but the casual way the professor said those words tore at something in him he no longer thought he had.

He almost stumbled back to his seat. No one looked at him as he walked past. They hadn’t heard the professor’s words, but they could tell Renjun wasn’t in the professor’s good graces.

“You ok?” Donghyuck asked as he sat down.

“I’m fine.” He couldn’t meet Donghyuck’s eyes. He pulled his jacket tighter around himself, but he couldn’t stop shaking.

“Okay, so who can tell me what other advanced magics use the techniques we apply in growth magic?” Professor Park asked.

* * *

By the end of class Renjun felt almost normal again.

The trembling was gone, and the hollow emptiness that replaced it was nothing he couldn’t handle. It had been a while since he’d felt it, but it was familiar enough.

After class, Donghyuck and Renjun made their way to a picnic table in the center of a circle of trees on the west side of campus. It was their go-to spot between classes. It had been since first year, when it was halfway between their Magic and History classes. Somehow no one else ever seemed to use the table. Renjun had a suspicion that Donghyuck had cast some magic to hide the spot from other students, but how he could’ve done so without getting caught was a mystery. Renjun kept meaning to ask him, but it always slipped his mind.

The spot was out of the way now, since Donghyuck had Attack and Defense Magic Theory – a small ten person class for the most advanced third years as preparation for the advanced magic class placement tests that would happen at the start of fourth year – and Renjun had Art.

“What was that about?” Donghyuck asked as they placed their bags down on the bench. Donghyuck jerked a thumb in the direction of the Magic buildings.

“Did you not see what happened?”

“Not clearly. I saw the flower grow, and then bang, it was all smoke.”

Renjun sighed. He wasn’t especially eager to recount the events of the past hour. Though it was a relief that even Donghyuck’s sharp eyes hadn’t caught much of what had happened. He told Donghyuck what had happened, excluding the comments Park had made about his human side. It would hurt him to say them, and make Donghyuck furious, and none of that would make him feel better.

“What? He can’t threaten to bind your magic like that,” Donghyuck said.

“Can’t he? He’s the professor.”

“Professors have rules they have to follow.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. It’s fine, I’ll just stick with humiliation in front of the class next time.”

“I’m telling you Park does that shit on purpose.”

“I guess…” It was what Renjun had thought too, but now he knew Professor Park had other reasons. Anyway, he didn’t need to add fuel to the fire of Donghyuck’s personal vendetta against Professor Park. Donghyuck had had a thing against Professor Park ever since Park had bested him in a demonstration of their fire magic skills.

So instead, Renjun said, “I saw Ten the other day.”

Donghyuck narrowed his eyes at the change in topic, but he could never resist gossip, and Ten was a gossip specialist. “Ten? Why were you in the med ward?”

“Not important,” Renjun said, ignoring Donghyuck’s protest. “But while I was there, I asked about the vampire we found in the forest.”

Renjun recounted how Ten had acted dodgy about the subject, and how he’d claimed to know nothing. They both knew how weird it was for Ten to know nothing. It was practically impossible.

When Renjun finished, Donghyuck rubbed his hands together, the beginnings of a grin spreading across on his face. Renjun knew that look. Donghyuck could smell a secret from a mile away, and he’d chase it down like a hound on a scent trail. It was one of Donghyuck’s favorite activities, up there with pissing teachers off and crashing events he wasn’t invited to. “He obviously knows something, but why would he hide it?”

Renjun shrugged. Donghyuck looked affronted at his lack of interest, but it was a facade. Renjun was interested. He was very, very interested. Something had to be going on, something the professors and the med ward weren’t predisposed to talk about. He was curious generally. Anyone would be. But this time he had the strangest feeling that he in particular needed to know what it was. He kept remembering the cage of thorns around the vampire’s core, and how it’d sank into his own magic. How Professor Seo had looked at him so seriously and asked “You didn’t touch it, right?” 

It was just fun to mess with Donghyuck. Renjun couldn’t help it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot might go along slower for a while, sorry! They still gotta go to school and pass class. Or fall asleep in class.
> 
> I'm envisioning the academy as a similar phase of life as university. Though there's more years, so it would be more like the last few years of high school + university grouped together.
> 
> Non-nct characters aren't based on real people. Except Taeyeon, because, well, Taeyeon.


	4. the week after [part 2]

Jeno’s classes passed in a blur. He wouldn’t have gone if Jaemin and Jisung didn’t drag him. He’d skipped a couple of days already, and had no qualms about skipping more. His professors didn’t seem to feel the same way, but a threat of detention wouldn’t have swayed him if the medical witches hadn’t banned him from the ward.

Doyoung had woken up, and Jeno tried to feel reassured that at least he was conscious. But when he’d seen Jeno, he’d stared right past him, an empty look in his eyes. He had looked past them all, the nurses, him, Jaemin, the vampire elders, other witches, as if he couldn’t see them. His lips had opened and closed, sometimes with words coming out, sometimes only mouthing at the air. “Gone, gone,” he’d said many times. They assumed he was talking about his witch pair, who hadn’t been seen since they found Doyoung. Jeno didn’t remember the witch’s name, and Doyoung hadn’t said any names in his mumbles.

The medical witches had told him not to touch the patient, but his hand had moved on instinct. He was used to giving and receiving comfort in casual touches. Most vampires were.

The moment his fingers had touched Doyoung’s arm, Doyoung had tensed up. The dullness in his eyes hadn’t changed, but his mouth had stopped moving and had hung open, the right side of his mouth drooping a bit more than the left. “Oh, oh, oh, oh,” Doyoung had moaned, followed by a line of drool that dribbled down his chin from his open lips.

The medical witches had acted quickly. They’d ushered out all the visitors, with a particularly cold look at Jeno, and had drawn the doors closed. The witches had cited “prevention of undue stress on the patient” to ban visitors for the next few days. Jeno had gotten a special ban of a week. “Or longer if that’s what he needs to learn to keep his hands to himself. Vampires, seriously,” he’d heard one of the nurses whispering to another.

He’d found that he’d been too tired to protest. Or perhaps it was the realization that Doyoung hadn’t recognized him or his touch, and had even seemed repelled by his touch, that had kept him from pushing back when the witches had pushed him out the door.

* * *

Less than a week after Donghyuck had decided to get to the bottom of whatever the professors were hiding, Renjun found himself creeping behind Donghyuck in the dark. Because it was Donghyuck, this was probably a Bad Idea. But because it was Donghyuck, they’d probably be able to pull it off.

At night, the moonlight filtered in through the floor to ceiling windows lining the grand hall, casting long shadows across the ground. Wind rustled the leaves of the trees outside, and the shadows of the one closest to the window moved across the floor. These wavering, semi-translucent shadows hid them as they moved, but barely.

Donghyuck darted from one shadow to the next, and Renjun followed. The spell Donghyuck had cast was supposed to muffle the sound of their feet, but Renjun still tried to place each foot lightly on the ground. He wasn’t sure if it was the spell or their tiptoeing that kept their steps quiet, and he wasn’t going to chance finding out. The whoo-whoo of an owl sounded outside. Maybe a familiar; owls were common. They were respectable familiars, and resonated well with witch energies. Renjun hoped it wasn’t the familiar of one of their professors. If it was, their gig was up.

Chenle followed them. He didn’t bother to hide in the shadows. His footsteps were silent, but not due to his effort. He was still a vampire. To Renjun, he almost seemed fuzzy around the edges, dream-like, like he might melt into the shadows.

Contrasting the dream-like ease of his silence was his clear sulkiness. He’d shoved his hands into his pockets and his shoulders were hunched forward. He scuffed his feet on the ground as he trailed behind them. Still silent, but to make a point.

“I still think this is a bad idea,” Chenle said. Renjun looked around warily. Donghyuck had cast another spell he’d found in some book to make their conversations unhearable to those outside their group, but Renjun didn’t trust the beat-up volume he’d found it in.

“Be quiet,” Donghyuck said, so he didn’t quite trust it either. “I didn’t ask you to come.”

“I couldn’t let you two go alone,” Chenle said.

“Like you’re much help. What are you going to do, turn into a bat and hover around them?”

“At least I can change shape. And by the way, bats are so 1980s. No one turns into a bat anymore.”

“Same point. You don’t need to be here.”

“My hearing is better than yours,” Chenle said. Donghyuck paused, a point conceded.

“Be quiet,” Renjun hissed at the both of them. In silence they darted over behind another pillar at the side of the hall. The hall led to the main entrance of the central amphitheatre, a circular enclosing with a domed ceiling. At the entrance, the hall split into two. Each side led to several professor’s offices and meeting rooms. 

Seeing no one, they went down the left side, Donghyuck and Renjun pressed into the wall, Chenle walking beside them with normal strides. Only one of the doors midway down the hall had a sliver of light shining out from the crack between it and the floor.

After several meters Chenle made a gesture with his hand, pointing at his ears. Renjun could barely hear anything yet, only wisps of noise. He stopped beside Chenle, but Donghyuck pressed on. Chenle made the gesture again, and mouthed, _I can hear them._

Donghyuck mouthed, _Well, I can’t._

Chenle threw up his hands. 

They moved closer still, one step at a time. Even Donghyuck was taking care to be extra quiet. As they moved closer, the unintelligible mutterings of noise turned into professors’ voices. They stopped behind a pillar only feet away from the door. 

“...I don’t think he should be learning magic. I’ve said this so many times. A human does not have the capacity for magic. I’ve already wasted a lot of time and effort in class on him, which is unfair to his classmates, and after what happened on Monday, I don’t think any amount of time will fix his issues.” The words would have been familiar, even if the voice was not. It was Professor Park’s voice. Unlike in class when he’d tried to sound understanding, here he only sounded cold. He spoke without condescension, but rather matter of factly, as if the truth was obvious.

“Professor Park.” A warning. The voice male, and also familiar, though Renjun couldn’t place it.

“You have a human in your midst?” A soft, lilting female voice. It didn’t sound particularly interested in the answer, but Renjun knew better than to take a vampire’s tone at face value.

“A half-human, Camila.” The voice sounded disgruntled by the vampire professor’s interest. Renjun was surprised that not all the professors already knew. Perhaps the witch professors had kept it to themselves, though Renjun couldn’t think why.

“So your kind does breed with humans? I had heard but had not believed.”

“I have heard the same of yours,” another voice said, tone as inoffensive as the vampire’s.

“Ah, yes, it is possible. If the mother is a vampire the baby is always stillborn, however, and a human mother will always die in the birth, if she does not die while carrying the baby to fruition. It is rare, so rare indeed.”

“It is rare for us as well,” Professor Park said. “At least, most half-humans have little to no magic, and can live among the humans without ever knowing what they are.”

“Huang Renjun is a special case. He has enough magic that he needs to learn the basics. It does happen,” said the earlier male voice.

Chenle’s eyes widened in the darkness. Renjun’s heart sank. This hadn’t been how he wanted Chenle to find out. He saw Chenle turn toward him, but he turned his head and stared hard at Donghyuck’s back.

Park’s voice again. “It does happen, but why should we bear the consequences? The magic he performed today is not the kind a witch of his power should be able to cast, and I can only conclude that the volatility of his human side interfered with his magic. We have seen cases of this recorded before, where humans misuse their magic in a fit of rage. He nearly beheaded one of his fellow students. Beheaded.”

“Is that so bad?” spoke another voice, vampire and amused. “A vampire who cannot defend himself does not deserve to live.”

“Jao, please remember that witches feel differently about this,” the female voice chided. “They believe in future potential.”

Another voice spoke. Renjun recognized his second year professor, Professor Baek. “You are citing an unfounded theory, Professor Park. It has never been proven that human emotion corrupts magic, and the recorded cases are little more than hearsay. From what I remember, Renjun isn’t that type of student. A bit slow to learn perhaps, but a hard worker, and certainly not violent.”

“You know how changeable human emotions are. They are—”

“Indeed, it isn’t clear to me from your story that Renjun was trying to harm the other student. It sounds more like he lost control of the magic, a situation which is your duty as a professor to prevent.”

“It was only my quick reaction that prevented a disaster! I took every preventative measure, as I always do, but you know that it’s impossible prepare for every situation. I couldn’t have predicted that spectacular of a loss of control, which I am still convinced wouldn’t have happened without either more power than he has or the emotional fragility of a human.”

“I don’t mean to question your abilities to run your class. However, again, I’m not convinced about this emotion theory. I’d like you to consider that perhaps you perceived the situation wrongly,” Professor Baek said.

“You doubt my perceptions? I know what I saw. You weren’t there. I would like to see—”

The male witch’s voice from earlier broke in. “Professor Park, please sit down. We can discuss the situation in more detail later. However, you would do well to remember that we have the duty to educate all with the potential for magic. If it is as you say, it is important that we teach him more, not less, so that he may learn to better control his magic and his emotions.” A pause. “I apologize that we’ve been diverted by this topic. We haven’t scheduled a meeting with the Faculty of Night to discuss witch matters.”

“No, no, not at all. It is very enlightening, Professor Seo,” the female voice said.

“What we have gathered to discuss today is the situation with Doyoung and Jaehyun. Jaehyun is still missing, and Doyoung was found in a comatose state near the school barrier by a group of our younger witches and vampires. He does seem to be recovering well, and we are waiting for him to recover fully to question him on what happened. Does anyone have any leads on the other disappearances?”

“None,” said another quieter vampire voice. “We’ve sent our best, and while they’ve found areas with blood scent or traces of magic, there is no trail. You said there was blood at the scene? Are we sure the cases are related?”

“I cannot be sure, but I suspect they are, and that this time the culprit failed to finish whatever they were doing. If they had succeeded, this would be the third time a witch-vampire pair has vanished in as many months.”

“The blood then?”

“It was Jaehyun’s.”

“He is dead?”

“We’ve found no body or identifiable body parts. For now we continue to assume he is missing.” The Professor paused, and when he spoke again he sounded tired. “To the crux of the matter then. When we were questioning the group that found Doyoung, the first witch to the scene reported that he saw a cage of black thorns around Doyoung’s core.”

“Black thorns? You're sure?” For the first time the female vampire’s voice sounded troubled. “That is an ill omen.” 

“I...I cannot verify it because I didn’t see the thorns myself. He reported that the thorns were fading when he tried to transfer energy, so perhaps the situation has not become as serious as we fear. Considering all the details of this case, however, the disappearances, the tainted blood, and now a report of black thorns, these are classic signs of demonic activity. It is time we prepare for the worst.”

“I understand. I will speak with the Council of Night.”

Murmurs rippled among the professors, and some began to talk among themselves.

A hand clasped Renjun’s wrist, and he turned around to see Chenle closer than he had been before. Renjun couldn’t see his expression in the darkness. Chenle jerked his thumb toward the way they’d come from. _Let’s go,_ he mouthed. Renjun looked at Donghyuck, who was still pressed against the pillar. Donghyuck turned at their movement, and shook his head. Chenle gestured more frantically, and pulled at Renjun’s wrist. A clear message. Renjun grabbed the back of Donghyuck’s jacket, and pulled. With a look of exasperation, Donghyuck relinquished his spot by the pillar.

They moved back through the corridor and past the large windows still flooding the hall with moonlight. The sound of the professors’ conversation had increased, and it masked any sound they made as they went back toward the exit, Chenle pulling them forward with more force than necessary. By the end they had broken into a run, and even when they made it out onto the front steps of the Grand Amphitheatre, Chenle kept running. They followed until they had put several buildings between them and the amphitheatre. In a grassy field by one of the fourth year mixed class buildings, Chenle stopped. 

Donghyuck and Renjun panted as they stood on the grass, trying to catch their breath. Renjun leaned forward, hands on his knees. Chenle barely looked winded.

The moon had risen higher in the sky. Some students passing by shot them a curious glance but didn’t approach. 

After their breaths had slowed enough for Renjun to lift his head, but not enough to speak in long sentences, Donghyuck pointed at the amphitheatre. “Explain.”

“I told you it was a bad idea in the first place. I wasn’t expecting the vampire professors to be there.”

“Usually...aren’t. And we got...good...info,” Donghyuck said. He was trying to sound angry, but his wheezing breaths got in the way.

Chenle shook his head. “Any of them could have detected me if they were paying attention. My aural shielding isn’t good enough for that.”

Donghyuck cursed.

“I don’t think they noticed me. I just knew we had to leave when they mentioned the Council of the Night. That means serious business, like the level of if they knew I was eavesdropping, they’d kill me.” The three of them shivered at that, because it sounded hyperbolic, but it was not. The Council of Night was the group of vampire elders that led the vampires, and Renjun didn’t doubt what would happen to someone that pried at their secrets.

“You’re already dead,” Donghyuck said, but it was half-hearted.

“Partially dead,” Chenle retorted, equally half-hearted.

“Do you think there’s really demons out there?” Renjun asked. Demons hadn’t been seen in over four decades, since the Sealing that ended the war against them. The demons had been pushed back into the demonic realm, a great void that ran parallel to the world, and the pathway back closed to them.

“I don’t know.”

They lapsed into silence. Renjun shivered. He cupped his magic, willing warmth into his body, trying to steady himself. Renjun saw Chenle’s eyes on him, the questions rising to his mouth. He had been waiting for this.

He felt the increasing pressure of vampiric auras. It was almost time for the night classes to begin. Twilight classes were the ones vampires and witches could share, and those had long passed. The pressure was more than he expected, and strangely familiar, and it was that or the adrenaline of the night that made him aware of the thumping of his heart. He grasped onto the feeling of Chenle’s aura, that to him spoke of light and inquisitiveness, and tried to wrap it around himself like a cloak.

“Demons?”

The three of them startled and turned. Jisung stood there in the grass not five feet from them, flanked by Jeno and Jaemin. Renjun’s pulse leapt horribly. It was horrible because the vampires must have felt it, and must have known their effect on him. Their auras were strong tonight. They lashed around, insistent and almost playful. Renjun felt drawn to step forward, but he stilled himself. He would not give them that. 

Chenle slid his hand around Renjun’s and moved closer to him. The movement was casual. It was a comforting touch, but too unusual for Renjun to take true comfort from it. Vampires held hands with each other easily, and with witches on the rare occasion too, but Chenle rarely held Renjun’s hand. Chenle was touchy, but usually it was more of an arm slung around the shoulder, bodies leaning on each other when they sat. Chenle’s hand felt tense in his.

“Why are you talking about demons?” Jisung asked again. He looked at Chenle and Renjun’s joined hands.

“A theoretical discussion,” Donghyuck said. “One we’ll have to continue tomorrow morning, I’m afraid, but you’re welcome to join. It’s past Renjun’s and my bedtime.” He made a great effort to yawn.

“A theoretical discussion involving the Council of the Night,” Jaemin said. He was not smiling. Renjun saw now that past the persistent friendliness, there was something thicker and dangerous. It was as if he and Jeno shared the same stuff at the core, but while Jeno projected his strength, displayed it in each move and gesture, Jaemin had hidden his in a small carefully constructed box and then had buried this box beneath layers of friendliness and a set of pearly whites.

“I felt you panic,” Jisung said, looking directly at Chenle. Chenle’s fingers twitched in Renjun’s hand. Renjun wasn’t sure what this meant, but Chenle had gone still beside him. With his hand touching Chenle’s, he could feel the thrum of Chenle’s aura, kept tight and close to himself but pulsing. His hand had grown warm. “Why?”

“You were spying on me?” Chenle asked, ignoring the question. His voice was soft, almost pleasant, and that was how Renjun knew how shaken he was. It was the tone he used for strangers, or to push emotions out of his voice. He wasn’t like the other vampires who could slip into a mask of emotionlessness. So he opted for politeness instead.

Jisung seemed to know this too, because he stilled. His expression didn’t change, but Renjun thought he almost looked hurt. “I always feel your strongest emotions, it’s not on purpose. I was, I thought, I thought you had gone off and done something stupid again, and hurt yourself.”

“What does it matter if I had? It’s none of your business.” Chenle’s veneer of pleasantry had started to slip. Renjun was confused, but he forced himself to snap out of it quickly. He hadn’t known that vampires could sense each others emotions, not to that level. He shouldn’t have been surprised. There was a lot about vampires he didn’t know, still, even after being in a school with them for almost 3 years. Partially his own fault he knew. He didn’t go out of his way to associate with most of them.

“It looks bad on me too, don’t you get it? You—” Chenle’s aura pulsed hot against Renjun’s skin. Jisung’s aura had started to spread out among them, and he felt his lungs constricting as the air around them became harder to breathe. Renjun spared a glance at Donghyuck, who watched the scene with some interest, his head cocked to one side. He looked completely relaxed, but Renjun knew he was analyzing the situation, seeing how he could turn it to his advantage. Renjun noted with some annoyance that he didn’t have any trouble breathing. 

“Right, I’m sorry I make you look bad. I always have, haven’t I—?”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it!”

“Jisung.” Although it was not loud, Jaemin’s voice cut across theirs. It demanded to be heard, and Renjun could feel his aura going into his voice, curling around the words and around Jaemin. “Now’s not the time.” It was light, friendly almost. Spoken with a warmth reminiscent of his usual friendliness. Yet why did Renjun feel uneasy? He felt for the pool of his magic.

Jaemin spoke again, still friendly. “We need to know the truth.” Jaemin did not smile. He looked at Jisung.

Jisung nodded. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“You wouldn’t,” Chenle breathed. He took a step back. Renjun stumbled a bit, as he was pulled back too. Chenle’s eyes had widened; he hadn’t been able to hold onto his calm. He’d never been much of a vampire that way – his emotions were too readable. That was one of the things Renjun liked him, but in the layers of the vampiric hierarchy, it was seen as a fatal weakness. Or so Chenle told Renjun, on days when he was feeling particularly down.

Those days had been happening more often lately. Since they’d found Doyoung in the woods, Renjun realized.

“Tell me what you know,” Jisung said.

Chenle’s entire body stiffened. A second passed. It was a second where he could not hide anything.

Jisung’s eyes widened as Chenle’s aura filled with anger and despair, looking at Chenle with what could only be his own rising dismay. That was a display of emotion Renjun didn’t expect to Jisung to show in front of two witches who were strangers to him. Whatever he had done, he hadn’t expected Chenle to react this way.

Another moment passed, and then it was like something snapped into place. Chenle’s grip on Renjun’s hand went slack. His eyes unfocused and refocused. The intensity of his emotions vanished from the air. Not gone, but muted, leaving a lingering bitter taste in the air that felt like sawdust in Renjun’s mouth. Chenle still looked like he wanted to strangle Jisung, but when he opened his mouth and began to speak, his voice contained none of those feelings. It came out mechanical and tired, like the reading of a textbook. “We listened in on the witch professors’ weekly meeting. They talked about Doyoung and Jaehyun and other disappearances."

“They talked about my brother?” Jeno made to advance toward them, but Jaemin touched his shoulder and he stopped.

“What else would they talk about?” Donghyuck asked. Jeno’s expression darkened, and Renjun felt a chill settle in the air. Which might have been the night air – it was almost winter after all – but he wasn’t so sure. For some reason, Jeno didn’t seem altogether stable. Unlike the night of the party, he seemed frayed around the edges.

Of course, Donghyuck wasn’t fazed. “And shut up, Chenle. We’re not giving away our hard-earned info for free.”

Chenle’s eyes fixed on Donghyuck with helpless fury. “You think I have a choice?” he said.

Donghyuck turned his attention away from the vampires in front of them. His eyes flicked between them and Chenle, and took in Chenle’s stiff posture, his over-focused eyes. “Ohhh, I see. You should have told me that earlier.”

Donghyuck made a gesture with his fingers and spoke several words, so fast that Renjun didn’t quite catch them. His magic shot out of his hands toward Chenle, and flew into his mouth, which had opened to continue telling the others what had happened.

Chenle made a choking noise and bent forward, coughing. He let go of Renjun so he could scrabble at his throat.

“Sorry, it itches. If you stop trying to talk, the feeling will pass,” Donghyuck said.

“What did you do to him?” Jisung snarled, from far too close.

Renjun turned to find that the three vampires had materialized much closer to them. Jisung’s eyebrows were drawn down, and his lips pulled back. “If you’ve hurt him—”

“It’s a silencing spell,” Donghyuck said with a dismissive wave. “Harmless. See, he’s fine.”

Chenle had stopped scrabbling at his neck, but he still had one hand touching his throat. He glared at Donghyuck, breathing heavily. He kept mouthing words, silent movements interspersed with a light cough or two. His hand twitched when he coughed.

“Didn’t know you cared, actually,” Donghyuck said, peering at Jisung more closely.

“What? No, I don’t care – about him I mean. I mean I care about him as much as any other vampire.”

“So you don’t care if I hurt him?”

“No! I mean yes, I don’t care about him specifically. I don’t want any vampires to get hurt.”

“Okay, whatever, I didn’t know you vampires cared so much about each other, but I don’t really care either way. If you don’t want him to actually hurt his throat, you should probably remove whatever compulsion you put on him, or he’s going to try to keep talking and eventually that will cause some damage. Doesn’t play nicely with a silencing spell. Though with a vampire’s regeneration speed I guess it doesn’t matter.”

Chenle coughed again, softly, and Jisung flinched. Renjun didn’t see Jisung do anything, but Chenle’s mouth stopped moving and the coughing subsided.

“This is a waste of time,” Jeno said. “We’ll get the truth from him later.”

“No,” Renjun said. He hadn’t intended to speak.

Jeno bared his teeth, the pointed fangs just showing. “You can’t stop us.”

“No, I mean,” Renjun’s voice wavered, and he hated it in that moment. He hated his wavering voice and his shivering in the cold and how out of the three of them he could do nothing, and just, all of it. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll tell you everything.”

Donghyuck whirled around. “Renjun.”

“I don’t want to see them do this to Chenle again,” he said, loud enough for only Donghyuck to hear. He could still taste the bitterness of Chenle’s hurt in the air. “And Doyoung is Jeno’s brother. He deserves to know.”

“Told you we shouldn’t have let Chenle come along,” Donghyuck grumbled, but he relented after making a couple more complaints about them doing all the work.

The three vampires watched them. Jaemin had fallen back into his casual state, relaxed and friendly-looking.

In a louder voice, Renjun said, “Promise you won’t do whatever you did to Chenle again and I’ll tell you what we know.”

Jeno frowned. A vampire’s word was binding in a way a witch’s or a human’s was not. They did not make promises lightly.

“A promise is more than—” he began.

“I promise,” Jisung said. Jeno frowned at him. He knew better. “Not for this.”

Jisung looked at Chenle again, but if he was hoping for acknowledgement, he didn’t get any. Chenle didn’t look at him.

“I’ll tell you what we know,” Renjun said again, “But not here. There’s too large a chance of being overheard.” Knowing how often Donghyuck used hearing spells, Renjun didn’t trust their surroundings. Not that there’d be many witches up this late at night, much less those who could keep up a long range hearing spell, but Renjun knew vampires had pretty good hearing too.

“Fine, pretty witch, but we meet at night,” Jaemin said. “We’ll send you a time and place.”

Despite himself, Renjun almost flushed. Only his grip on his magic kept the blood from rising up his cheeks. He’d never had a vampire call him pretty before, and it annoyed him that it affected him so easily. A natural physiological response, Renjun told himself, but it didn’t make him feel much better. Especially when Jaemin grinned at him as if he knew.

“And you come alone,” Jeno said.

“What?” Donghyuck said. Chenle must’ve tried to protest too because he burst into a fit of coughing, and doubled over. The coughing kept going until he went down on one knee, putting a hand on the ground to brace himself.

“Whoops, forgot about that,” Donghyuck said. He made another gesture, and his magic leapt back to him. Chenle coughed a final time and stopped. He massaged his throat with his fingers, and glared at Donghyuck.

“A little warning next time,” Chenle said. His voice was raspy.

Jisung appeared suddenly by their side and tried to help Chenle up, but Chenle pushed his hands away with a snarl.

“Don’t touch me,” he said, with a ferocity that Renjun hadn’t hear from him before. Jisung stepped back. One step, and then two more, and he was back by the others. His face was a mask of disinterest, but Renjun had not missed the shadow of hurt that had been visible for just a second when Chenle spoke.

“I can’t warn you, that’d take away the fun,” Donghyuck said. He sounded very serious about it.

Chenle gritted him teeth but said nothing.

They turned back to the other vampires.

“You can’t make him go alone. Plus we have the information so shouldn’t we get to set the terms? Plus, I’m the better storyteller,” Donghyuck said. “And it was my plan.”

“You’re also one of the most powerful witches in the grade. We don’t want to deal with your magic, or any lies you plan to hide with magic,” Jaemin said.

“I’m very honest,” Donghyuck said, affronted. “When I want to be. And still, we have the info.”

“You have the info, but we can and will drag it out of you if we have to.”

That was what it came down to. Their power gave them the right to set the terms. To force Chenle into…whatever that had been. That always seemed to be how it worked in this damned academy. Sometimes Renjun couldn’t wait to graduate. Except he wouldn’t have a degree or any useful skills for the human world, and he couldn’t see any place for himself in the witch world.

“I’d like to see you try,” Donghyuck said. Renjun saw his magic crackling at his fingertips. Donghyuck, who would mess with just about anyone but had told him that these were not vampires to be messed with, and who was about to ruin his chances at a pairing with any of them in fifth year.

“It’s fine,” Renjun said. “I’ll go.”

“I don’t think that’s a smart idea,” Donghyuck said.

“Since when were you so into smart ideas?”

“Hold up, when have I had an idea that wasn’t smart? No, don’t answer that. It’s not my fault you can’t appreciate the genius behind them.”

“It’ll be fine, Donghyuck. We don’t have that much info. It’ll be short.” It was true. Their information was short, even if the weight of it was heavy. _Demons._ It sounded like a child’s nightmare, something that couldn’t touch their real lives.

“We won’t hurt him, if that’s what you’re worried about. Promise.” Jaemin flashed a smile. The fact that they felt the need to make the promise made Renjun feel less reassured about his safety.

“At least let me come,” Chenle said.

Renjun remembered with a pang that Chenle knew about him now, and realized his friends were afraid for him not because of the vampires, even oh so powerful and dangerous as they were among their grade, but because of _him_. Because of what he was. Chenle wouldn’t have made that offer otherwise, not when they’d already gotten a promise. Renjun should’ve felt relieved that Chenle still thought Renjun deserved his friendship, and was even trying to protect him after finding out the truth, but he felt bitter.

A real witch wouldn’t have needed extra protection.

Renjun had taken care of himself before either Donghyuck or Chenle had known the truth. He didn’t need to be treated like something fragile.

“I’m fine,” Renjun snapped. Chenle looked confused, and a little hurt, and Renjun instantly felt sorry.

“Sorry, Chenle, Jeno’s right,” Jaemin said. “It’s better if he’s alone. It’ll be easier to tell if he’s lying if there’s fewer distractions around. Easier to detect fluctuations of pulse and heartbeat.”

“So you’re basically glorified lie detectors? Can I call one of you up next time I want to know if someone’s lying to me?” Donghyuck said scathingly.

In spite of Donghyuck’s tone, or maybe because of it, Jaemin made an exaggerated bow and said, “Sure. At your service. Call me anytime.”

A bell tolled in the distance. The moon hung high in the sky, but Renjun no longer felt tired.

The vampires needed to go to class, so they separated, and Donghyuck and Renjun headed home.

“Vampires always thinking they can waltz in and get what they want,” Donghyuck said, as they made the trek back to their apartment. It was 20 minutes from the edge of campus, and the way back felt longer than usual. “I don’t care if they’re hot. See if any of them get the privilege of pairing with me in fifth year. I’ll make them beg for it.”

Renjun snorted. He couldn’t imagine them begging for anything, but the idea raised his spirits.

Later he realized he hadn’t exchanged numbers with any of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter update this time buutt the next chapter is halfway done


	5. in the den

A summons arrived a day later. Not, as Renjun had expected, as a text or a message passed through a friend.

It came in a black envelope with the word Invitation embossed in loopy silver lettering on the top. When Renjun opened the envelope, there was a piece of beige paper within that felt thicker and stiffer than standard writing paper.

The paper read,

You are formally invited to

1622 Asomateus, Suite 702

6 pm

There was a scribble at the bottom that definitely wasn’t Jisung, but could’ve been Jeno or Jaemin.

Everyone knew 1622 Asomateus was the vampire-owned apartment building where all the powerful vampire families sent their children. Renjun supposed he should be grateful they hadn’t set a time after midnight. He wasn’t.

“Are you serious?” Donghyuck said, when he saw the invitation. “Who uses snail mail these days? Have they not heard of cell phones?”

“You know that’s not it,” Renjun said. All Renjun’s few and Donghyuck’s many vampire friends had cell phones. Donghyuck was still miffed he hadn’t been allowed to go with, and more miffed now that the meeting would be the 1622 Asomateus. Donghyuck wanted to go there, but despite his connections he hadn’t scored an invite yet.

Donghyuck sighed dramatically. “It’s still outdated.”

Then he frowned. “Wait, how did they know where we live?”

* * *

By the time the sky had darkened, Donghyuck had stuffed Renjun’s pockets with notes on easy light and fire magic, set his phone number up as emergency speed dial, and given Renjun a small vial filled halfway with murky green liquid.

“Don’t use that one unless you have to,” Donghyuck said.

“What is it, exactly?” Renjun eyed the vial with suspicion.

“Enough sleeping potion to knock a vampire out for a night. Or a witch for two days. They’ll wake up with the worst not-hangover hangover, so don’t stick around for the next morning. Also, it turns their hair green for a couple days. I haven’t figured out how to get rid of that.”

“Okay, this is all great, but I honestly don’t see how I’m going to slip them sleeping potion. Am I just going to wave it in front of them and hope someone wants to take a sip?”

“Details.” Donghyuck shrugged. “You’ve got to figure that part out.”

Renjun pulled at his pockets, now brimming with papers. “And you know I don’t have much luck with light or heat magic.”

Donghyuck leveled a look at him. “Yeah, and it would make me feel better to know I’m not sending my best friend into a den of vampires with nothing.”

“It’s not a den, it’s an apartment.”

“It’s the only building in the area with gothic architecture, it’s surrounded by big black gates, and there’s a creepy dude at the gate to let you in. There’s even gargoyles on the roof. It’s a den.”

Despite Renjun’s nerves, and the truth that the notes were useless to him, the potion was almost useless, and the emergency speed dial would only be useful if Donghyuck could teleport in and whoop some vampire ass (even Donghyuck hadn’t figured out teleportation, much to Yuta’s amusement), Donghyuck’s fussing made him feel better.

“So. I’m your best friend?” Renjun asked. He couldn’t hide a grin.

Donghyuck glared at him. “You’d better be, since I’m giving you my last vial of sleeping potion, and it took me two years to make that batch” – Renjun wondered where the rest of the batch had gone, and decided he didn’t want to know – “But I might revoke the privilege of my best friendship because you’re an idiot.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“I didn’t volunteer to walk right into a den of vampires, alone. You of all people know what most of them think about part-humans.”

Renjun had been trying not to think about that. “They don’t know that, and it’s not like I’m going to tell.” Could they sense it on him, though, clinging to him the way it clung to his magic? No. That couldn’t be, or his problems would’ve been larger than a bad grade in Magic.

“I know, since you’re not actually an idiot, thank the gods,” Donghyuck said. “But I don’t know if it’s better that they think you’re a witch. Most of the time witches don’t go to vampire apartments at that time of night unless they are in a relationship or they’re…well…looking to give blood to a vampire.”

Oh. Renjun remembered seeing Jeno with that other witch from his class, the long-limbed pretty brunette, and shuddered. His eyes had been drawn to the way Jeno’s lips had rested on her long ballerina neck, and how his fangs had oh so delicately broken through the surface of her skin. He should’ve looked away immediately, but instead he’d watched until the end, like some kind of creepy voyeur. He’d felt disgusted with himself.

“They promised not to hurt me,” Renjun pointed out, partially to distract himself from the image now playing in his head.

“They might not think that counts as hurting you. It doesn’t hurt. I mean, it feels pretty good.”

Yes, it had looked that way. He glared at Donghyuck, who now had a dreamy look on his face.

“Hey, I’m being honest!”

“They’re not there for that. They just want info. I’ll go in, tell them what we know, and get out. And I’m sure they have lots of other witches to get blood from if they want to.”

Donghyuck nodded slowly.

“You’re right about that. Just be careful.”

“Okay, mom.”

“Mom?” Donghyuck said with indignation. “If I have to be related to you can’t I at least be your cooler, hotter cousin that everyone secretly wants to bang?”

“Gross, no.”

The remaining time passed quickly. Renjun headed to the bus stop at a quarter past 5, his pockets heavier with notes on more complex magic that would likely go to shit if he attempted it.

The U line of the bus circled through the apartments near campus and through part of the campus itself. It came every 20 minutes. Unlike most of the bus lines further in the city, it came exactly on schedule. Renjun made it just in time, swiped his student badge on the card reader, and took a window seat halfway to the back.

The bus was pretty empty, with less than 10 of the seats filled. Renjun was glad to see no one he knew. He identified two of them as vampires off the bat. Younger ones, probably, because their auras were so obvious. Near the back, there were two people wearing the t-shirts of training squadron initiates. The t-shirts were gray, with a white half circle struck through by three lines of different lengths sewn into the back. Aside from the design, their clothes were nondescript. Initiates would earn their way to better clothes, just as they would earn their place on a training squadron. If they could.

The two were probably a witch-vampire pair, judging by their closeness.

The rest Renjun wasn’t sure about, but he didn’t bother to look closer. He plugged his earphones in, and looked out the window. A soft, emotional ballad came on. He hit skip without looking, and an emo rock song from his preteen years blared in its place, heavy with bass guitar, a singer that sounded like he was half crying half screaming, and the syncopated beat of drums. Okay, he could live with that.

The darkening landscape rushed past him. The academy had been built near the edge of an urban center, at the boundary where humankind had made its claim against nature, where the greedy grasping claws of civilization had met forest and mountain and devoured until they could devour no more. The academy had lived on this edge, facing a sprawling human city in the front and untamed forest in the back, for over a century. The city had continued to spread in the other direction, away from the academy.

The U line ran from the academy grounds into the edges of the city itself, where most of the students lived. The fringes of the city were full of non-humans, but it wasn’t exclusive to them. Four humans lived in the unit down the hall from Renjun. Renjun had always wondered why the school hadn’t been placed further from the city, but perhaps learning to dwell among humans was part of the program. It had its advantages, particularly if you were a vampire.

Wards around the school kept humans from wandering too close, but special exceptions were made for a select number of individuals. The U line bus driver was almost always a human. Sometimes they were part human, with a witch somewhere in their ancestry. Or much more rarely, a vampire. Sometimes the human and part-human employees around campus knew about the witches and vampires, but Renjun had found out that was rare too. Some of them didn’t even know their ancestry. A witch from an influential line wouldn’t be caught be dead with a part-human child, after all.

Most that knew found out because their parent told them the truth. As Renjun’s mother had.

Perhaps he’d always known. Even as a child, he’d felt the blazing light of his mother’s core, and known when she’d used the light around the house. He’d seen it and asked about it, and she’d said, “Renjun, you’re imagining things.”

She always called him Renjun. She didn’t use pet names. And after that she didn’t use the light either.

Not much at least. But sometimes people came over with their own lights and then she would have to. And sometimes late at night he’d peek into her room, and he would see her using it.

So he didn’t forget it. He kept it to himself, like many other things.

It worked out best that way. Or it had, until he became a teen and found the light within himself. Then she hadn’t had a choice.

Renjun switched the song again. He was thinking about stupid things again, from long ago. They were things that shouldn’t matter now. He had gone home every winter break since he’d started at the academy almost three years ago instead of finishing up his last year of high school. His mother would tell him she missed him and loved him and they’d go to their favorite restaurant and things would be fine.

She hadn’t wanted to him to stay.

That was fine too. Really.

Renjun switched the song again. The bus driver honked at another car on the road. Renjun saw the letters for Asomateus Circle flash over the top of the bus display, and pushed the button by the window to a signal for a stop. The ride had passed faster than he expected.

When the bus rolled over to a jerky halt by the side of the road, the two he’d identified as vampires and two others went to the door.

For some reason, instead of filing out after them, Renjun went to the front door. He stopped in front of the driver, an older man whose hair and beard were streaked with gray. If he looked closer, he could see a hint of light from the man. He was probably a few generations removed.

“Do you believe in magic?” Renjun asked.

The man squinted at him. “What are you going on about?”

“Magic,” Renjun said.

The man shook his head. “Is this your stop, kid? The bus has got to go.”

“Yes, thanks,” Renjun said, and stepped off the bus before the bus driver could tell him to get out. “Weird kid,” he heard the bus driver say under his breath as the doors shut behind him.

Renjun zipped up his hoodie further, and shoved his hands into his pockets. He walked down the sidewalk past grey buildings that shot into the sky. He felt angry, but he didn’t know why.

The steam blew off by the time he reached the front gate of 1622 Asomateus. Even without the address number marked on the side of the gate, he couldn’t have missed it. Several of the buildings he’d passed near this end of the street had gates, but none were so large and dark as these. The other gates had bars he could see through, but this one was solid and had bats engraved into the surface.

If the intention was to hide what lay beyond, the gate wasn’t doing a very good job. The building loomed up behind it, dwarfing its neighbors. It was at least eight stories, and the size of two large apartment complexes pushed together. Renjun had never seen it from so close before. He’d thought of it as a glorified frat house, but it had too much grandeur to compare. It was completely black with arched windows, jagged spires, and gargoyles sitting sentinel on the roof, beasts with the sharp fangs of those living beneath them, mouths open to bite. A uniformed person stood by the gate, letting people in and out.

“Invitation please,” the uniformed person said, when Renjun got to the front of the gate. Unlike what Donghyuck had said, he didn’t look creepy. From this close, he looked like a normal student – normal for a vampire at least – and about Renjun’s age, maybe a year or two older.

Renjun pulled out the envelope from his pocket. One of the notes Donghyuck had given him came out with it and fluttered to the ground. He scrambled to pick it up, but before he could the uniformed boy bend over and plucked it up from the ground.

“Notes for class,” Renjun said nervously. Donghyuck hadn’t given him anything incriminating, right?

The uniformed boy spared a glance at the note, folded it in half in one deft moment, and held it out to Renjun. “Cute,” he said. “Don’t think I’ve seen someone come here to study magic. That’s new.”

Renjun took the note back, avoiding the vampire boy’s fingers while trying to seem like he wasn’t. He handed over the envelope in its place.

“Yeah, we have a school project. For, um, Human Studies.” He kicked himself mentally. Why would he need magic notes for Human Studies?

The vampire didn’t seem to notice. “Oh, do you?” He looked through the envelope and his eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “Suite 702. That’s new too.”

He handed the envelope back to Renjun, and knocked on the gate. It swung open just enough for Renjun to pass through.

“Suite 702 will be in the right wing, on the 7th floor. Have fun with your…project. If you need any help, I’m in Suite 201 and I’ll be off my shift at midnight. I know some things about magic.” The boy licked his lips.

“Uh, right. Thanks.” Renjun walked through the gate, feeling unprepared. He tried to shake the feeling off. He had nothing to prepare for; he was just going to tell them the truth and get out.

But it was hard not to be intimidated by the building towering in front of him, unnecessarily dark and majestic. Several of its windows were illuminated with light, and a few more lights blinked on as he walked down the pathway to the right side of the building.

It was too early for many vampires to be out, and he only passed one on the pathway, who looked too tired to give him more than a cursory glance. Before he knew it, the entrance to the right wing came into view. It was a wooden double-door at least twice his height, set into an arched alcove. Concentric circles were etched into its surface, overlapping and crossing each other. A set of steps led up to the doors.

As Renjun neared the entrance, another male stepped out. Renjun thought about ducking out of the way, but he was too close, so he steeled his shoulders and continued forward.

Then he realized the male wasn’t a vampire.

Renjun recognized him.

“Mark?”

Mark stopped in the doorway, his mouth forming a round O.

“Ren-Renjun?”

Mark’s hair, which had always in Renjun’s memory of him for three years been combed flat and parted neatly, was mussed and sticking up in a couple places. He was wearing a hoodie instead of his usual button-up, and he didn’t have his large circular glasses. There were spots of pink on his cheeks.

Renjun’s eyes were drawn to Mark’s neck, to two small but visible punctures. The two dots of red stood out against his skin. It was almost mesmerizing.

He’d never seen Mark like this.

Mark’s eyes followed Renjun’s and he flushed. He pulled his hood up over his head, hiding the marks on his neck.

“What are you doing here?” Renjun asked, and Mark’s face grew redder.

“Nothing,” Mark said, his voice pitched higher than usual. Then realizing how unconvincing that sounded, he added a more unconvincing, “School project.”

“Me too,” Renjun said.

“Right. Cool. I’ll see you around,” Mark said, and all but bolted down the steps. He left the door half-open, which Renjun was thankful for. He hadn’t seen a doorbell on the wooden doors or in the archway, and he wasn’t keen to knock.

He slipped through the doorway and closed the door behind him. It shut with an audible clang, and he winced.

He turned to see an interior as over-decorated as the outside. Great panels lined the ceiling, each etched with scenes from some vampire legend. Lamps in wiring like black vines hung from the ceiling every couple of meters. Renjun couldn’t tell if the light inside them was electric or not. The hall he faced led to a common area.

He walked down the hall, trying to ignore the portraits hung in the walls. Their eyes seemed to follow him. The figures in the portraits all looked eerily young and flawless, though they were probably hundreds if not thousands of years old. Vampires weren’t immortal, but they could live a long time as long as they had a fresh supply of blood. With the way humanity had expanded in the past several centuries, that wasn’t hard to come by.

But did they all have to look that young?

Renjun looked for an opening in the hall where elevators might be, but he didn’t see one. The hall only led to the common area. From the hallway, he saw couches and several circular tables surrounded by chairs in the common area. A great chandelier hung from the ceiling, large and spidery, held in place by a single wire that looked far too easy to snap. Two vampires were visible, sitting next to each other on one of the couches, talking. A fire crackled in the fireplace, reflecting light off the fine patterns in the windows across the walls. Renjun didn’t know what that was for. Vampires didn’t feel the cold.

Renjun warily stepped into the room. The two vampires turned toward him, but continued their conversation.

He saw a staircase that wound around the side of the common area. Still no elevator. He started toward the stairs, feeling resigned. Maybe vampires didn’t have elevators, and he would have to take 7 flights of stairs. His route to the stairs took him closer to the two vampires than he preferred.

“Are you lost?” the female vampire called when he came within earshot.

He stopped, unsure what to tell them, but decided it was better not to ignore her. He wasn’t exactly lost. He’d made it to the right building, and he knew where he was supposed to go. He just didn’t know how to get there.

“I’m looking for Suite 702?” he said.

At this, she turned to face him fully, and leaned forward so that her chin rested on her hands. She looked him up and down, her gaze sharp. The other vampire looked interested as well.

“Do you have an invitation?” she asked, a cold edge to her voice.

Renjun pulled the envelope out again. This time he managed to avoid dislodging any of Donghyuck’s notes.

She took it from his hands without asking, and turned it over several times, inspecting the front and back.

“It’s real?” her companion asked.

“Looks like it,” she said, and brightened. She handed the envelope back. “Sorry about that. There’s been fakes before, especially for them. They are popular, you know. You’ll want to take the elevator though – the stairs are killer here. They’re down that way. Turn left when you reach the end and you can’t miss them.”

That hadn’t been so bad.

Renjun thanked her and started in the direction she’d pointed to. Before he’d gotten very far, he felt a familiar presence wash over him.

He saw Jeno walking toward him. The vampire looked different, and Renjun felt the same strange disorientation as when he saw Mark earlier.

Jeno wore black joggers and a white t-shirt. His hair was wet, as if he’d just come out of a shower. Unexpectedly, because Renjun didn’t think vampires could have bad vision, he wore a pair of glasses. It made him feel like any other student, lounging around in casual clothes at home. Renjun could almost imagine him scarfing down chips and getting the crumbs everywhere the way Donghyuck did. Renjun rubbed his eyes, not sure if he was imagining things.

“Hey,” Jeno said. “I got a notification when you entered the grounds, but you didn’t let me know you were here. I could’ve come to get you.”

Jeno even sounded friendlier, though that wasn’t saying much. Then again, he didn’t know what Jeno was like, really. He shouldn’t assume that just because he’d beaten Renjun up once and had been generally cold or disdainful that he was a bad person, right? Get in and get out, Renjun told himself. The night had been weird enough, already.

“I didn’t know how to let you know I was here,” Renjun said.

“Did you try entering our number on the pad by the door?”

Seeing Renjun’s blank look, Jeno added, “It’s on the pillar to the right of the door.”

Renjun ducked his head, embarrassed.

Jeno led them to the elevators, modern sleek things that were out of place next to the rest of the décor. They rode up to the 7th floor in silence. Jeno played with his phone. The elevator doors opened with a cheery ding, and Renjun followed Jeno down the hall past more portraits and patterned windows. They passed brown doors with numbers engraved on them. 701, 703, and there it was. 702.

Jeno unlocked the door and went in. Renjun followed Jeno into the suite.

The suite was unexpectedly normal, albeit spacious and large. Renjun noted with envy that their kitchen appliances looked brand new. It was unfair. Vampires didn’t even need an oven or a stove.

They went into the living room.

“Sit wherever you like,” Jeno said, so Renjun took a seat at the edge of the couch. Jeno settled into an armchair across from him. Renjun tried to ignore the way Jeno’s wet hair rested against his face and neck, and the droplet of water that trickled down the side of Jeno’s face.

“Where are the others?” Renjun asked.

“They’ll be here later,” Jeno said. The droplet of water continued down, outlining Jeno’s jaw. “I had a question I wanted to ask you first.”

Renjun suddenly became aware of Jeno’s aura around him. Jeno had been subtle about it, or perhaps he hadn’t known he was doing it, but sometime in the past few minutes it had expanded to fill the room. Renjun could feel it brushing over him like the lightest touch of a finger.

Jeno wasn’t using it on him. He could tell. His pulse was steady, and there was no feeling of intention.

But it was everywhere, all over his skin.

Renjun wrapped his arms around himself. “Alright, what do you want to know?” What could Jeno ask about that he didn’t want Jaemin and Jisung to know? He didn’t want to get caught between them, but he was here so he didn’t have much of a choice but to answer Jeno’s questions. He tried to think about how to be diplomatic. He didn’t have much to go by, since he spent a majority of his time with Donghyuck, who had to be coerced to be diplomatic, and Chenle, who was diplomatic but didn’t talk about how to behave among vampires. Renjun was distracted by the droplet of water reaching the end of its path, rolling down Jeno’s neck and under his shirt collar.

“How did you challenge me?” Jeno asked.

Challenge? Right. Renjun remembered that was what Chenle had called it. It felt so long ago. Renjun didn’t remember much himself of what he’d done exactly. Just that terrible pounding in his blood, suffocating him. And how he’d pushed—

Renjun didn’t know how much he could say. He didn’t want to give himself away, but there wasn’t anything he could say if he didn’t mention vampire auras.

“It was an accident,” Renjun said.

Jeno’s eyes narrowed, and the pressure of his aura increased. Renjun started to feel that beat in his blood again, faint but there in tandem with his heartbeat.

Renjun hadn’t realized how beautiful Jeno’s eyes were. They were catlike, but his dark amber irises seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. Renjun wanted a closer look at them.

He pinched himself.

“I don’t care if it was an accident. Tell me how you did it,” Jeno said, and his aura was focused on Renjun all at once.

The beat in Renjun’s blood surged. Renjun tried to take a deep breath and clear his head, but it felt more like he was gasping for air. He pinched himself again. He was sure he’d pinched himself harder this time, but he barely felt it. A pressure was building in his head. His eyes locked on Jeno’s and slide down his face, until they reached his lips.

He closed his eyes, but the image of Jeno’s lips hovered in his mind. Jeno felt too close, and too far away, at the same time.

He couldn’t pretend he didn’t know anymore.

“Stop using your aura on me,” he said through clenched teeth. He tried to keep the other words in. Some part of his mind had devolved into senseless poetry about Jeno’s eyes, his lips, his jawline, his muscular arms. How had he never noticed Jeno’s arms before?

“You can feel it?” Jeno asked. The voice sounded too close. Renjun’s eyes fluttered open. Jeno’s face was closer, but Renjun realized Jeno hadn’t moved from his relaxed position in his chair. It was Renjun who had pushed himself to the edge of his seat, leaning over like a reed in the wind.

“Some witches can,” Renjun hissed. He leaned back again, trying to put more space between himself and Jeno. He felt dull, stupid, and angry at himself. Why was he moving away from what he wanted? He was angry at Jeno too. Why wouldn’t he come closer?

Wait. What he wanted?

No. He’d told himself he wouldn’t want this.

He swayed in his seat. Jeno watched him, eyes still narrowed. Jeno was. Jeno was what he wanted to avoid. Jeno was cold and probably arrogant with the strength and talent to stay that way. Who probably looked down his sculpted nose at witches. Renjun almost burst into half-hysterical laughter. If he looked down on witches, what would he think of a half-human?

And that didn’t even matter. Jeno was a vampire.

Jeno was beautiful.

“So you can feel my aura. Do you mean you used magic on it then?”

“Yes,” Renjun breathed.

“Why?” Jeno’s face was touched with moonlight from the window. Before he could stop himself, Renjun reached out a finger and traced the line the droplet of water had taken, down the side of Jeno’s face, along his jaw, and down his neck. The beating in his blood thrummed with pleasure at the contact with Jeno’s skin. It felt cool to the touch.

Jeno looked startled for a moment. “What are you—?” Then he tilted his head and leaned a little closer, a considering look on his face.

“No, I see why,” Jeno said. “You didn’t seem like it, but you’re like the rest of them. You _want_ _me_. You could’ve said so, instead of using magic on me.”

Renjun stood up. A part of him registered that he should’ve felt offended. But a larger part wasn’t listening at all. When Jeno spoke, Renjun could see the flash of his fangs, sharp and glistening like they might easily break into the tender skin of his neck.

Renjun didn’t feel himself walking over to Jeno, until he had fisted a hand in the fabric of Jeno’s shirt and was pulling at him. The vampire rose. He looked amused, but his eyes focused on Renjun’s neck. Renjun could feel it.

“I don’t want you,” Renjun managed to say.

“You don’t?” Jeno drew back slightly in confusion, but Renjun fisted another hand in his shirt and pressed closer.

He shouldn’t do this. Hadn’t he promised himself…something?

But there was the pounding in his blood. So loud now. Telling there was something else he wanted, needed to have.

And Jeno was so close.

He could hate himself tomorrow.

“I don’t want you,” Renjun said again, voice barely above a whisper. “I want this.”

He hooked a finger in the collar of his sweater and pulled it down, exposing his collarbone and the side of his shoulder. Jeno’s amusement warped into something more predatory.

There was that feeling of hovering over the edge of a precipice. A sense of vertigo and the fear of falling that for some reason made him excited rather than afraid.

Instinctively, he knew what to do.

He tilted his head back.

Then Jeno’s lips touched his neck, and he was falling.

Jeno’s lips were soft. The tips of his fangs brushed Renjun’s neck.

Then there was a click.

“I’m back, Jeno,” called a voice, and the door opened.

Jeno’s aura receded, and Renjun snapped back to his senses. After one blurry moment, it came to him with disgusting clarity what he had almost done to himself. He registered quickly that his body was pressed against Jeno, with Jeno’s fangs about to pierce his neck.

And he still wanted it.

Oh gods.

He tried to shove Jeno away. It was like shoving at a wall, and he ended up shoving himself back onto his seat on the couch, a safe distance away.

What had he been thinking?

Jeno stepped back from him too. With uncharacteristic clumsiness for a vampire, Jeno’s foot hit his armchair and he stumbled a bit. He sat down slowly, his hungry look fading.

Jaemin peered around from the entrance.

“Renjun, you’re here early,” he said. “You did say 6:30, right, Jeno?”

He looked between Jeno and Renjun, his gaze too knowing for Renjun’s comfort. His eyes absently glided over Renjun’s neck.

Renjun resisted the urge to adjust the collar of his sweater. Even without the haze of the bloodbeat, his body still felt hot, though it was returning to normal. He still felt the lingering sensation of Jeno’s fangs on his neck, and he had a desperate urge to run his fingers over his skin, but that would have been too obvious.

Jeno hadn’t pierced his skin, Renjun knew that much. But it was hard not to check.

Seeing no marks, Jaemin seemed to lose interest. He put his bag down on an empty chair before bounding over and plopping himself next to Renjun on the couch. He sat too close for Renjun’s liking, close enough that their arms would touch if Renjun shifted in his seat. Jaemin didn’t seem to notice their proximity.

“I was afraid I’d get lost, so I got here early,” Renjun said. Jeno seemed surprised Renjun was covering for him, but Renjun didn’t really want to get on his bad side. Also, Renjun wasn’t interested in talking about what’d just happened.

“Aw, you should have told me that. I could have been your guide,” Jaemin said.

Renjun wasn’t sure how he could have done that, since he had no way of contacting them, but he didn’t point it out.

Jaemin looked at Renjun’s empty hands and shook a finger at Jeno.

“Jeno, just because I’m not here doesn’t mean you a be a bad host. Renjun, do you want water, tea, coffee? I have some great coffee.”

Jeno crossed his arms and sank back into his chair. He looked mildly offended. Now that the hunger was gone from his face, he looked disinterested in Renjun, more so than when they’d met up earlier. Then, at least, he’d been trying to appear less aloof. Well, Renjun had expected this. There were only a few things most vampires wanted from him.

“You drink coffee?” Renjun blurted.

“Yeah, don’t you?”

“Are you supposed to?”

“Am I not supposed to drink a delicious beverage?”

“A nasty beverage,” Jeno said.

“This is why you have no taste. So, coffee?”

Renjun managed to avoid pointing out the absurdity of the question. It was 6:30 pm, and he didn’t want to stay up all night.

“Water’s good,” he said.

“Ok, suit yourself,” Jaemin said. He sounded unreasonably disappointed.

Jaemin disappeared into the kitchen. There were some sounds of rummaging around, and a crackling sound, so it seemed like he had started a pot of coffee after all. He reappeared with a grey mug and gave it to Renjun.

Renjun felt absurd as he sipped water from the mug, which he now noticed said ‘Vampires Rule’ on the side. He tried not to think about what else might have been in the mug, then thought that there was no way a vampire would have put blood in a mug when they could have it from the source. The thought made him feel better.

Jaemin’s arrival gave Renjun a good excuse to turn his attention away from Jeno. Looking at Jaemin was a minute improvement. Jaemin was polite about this in a way – he wasn’t projecting his aura, keeping it close to himself. In general, out of the three of them, he seemed to be most careful of the effect he had on non-vampires, whether consciously or subconsciously. To Renjun’s great relief, this meant Renjun wasn’t plagued with the impulse to throw himself at the vampire.

But did all vampires have to be so stupidly attractive?

It made sense, of course. A biological kind of sense, like the bright colors and sweet nectar of the pitcher plant. He’d seen something like that once. A video with ants swarming around the mouth of the plant, and one by one they fell in.

It was better to think about it that way. He could reason about biology, draw a diagram of cause and effect. It was natural selection, it was predator-prey behavior, it was that paragraph from his Human Studies textbook. It wasn’t him.

It was just biology that made him feel this way.

Just biology that had almost made him—

He winced.

It’d been a long time since he’d been so affected by his…biology.

It was fine. Unlike before, nothing had really happened. After tonight, he’d steer clear of them, and things would return to normal.

It was just biology, he told himself, that drew his eyes to Jaemin’s face. There was a small, irrational part of him thought that he might as well look his fill since he doubted he’d see them again. Jaemin was softer around the edges than Jeno. He didn’t have the night black hair most of them had, and unlike Jisung his didn’t look dyed; his was a caramel brown that matched his eyes. His eyes were also a subtly lighter shade than the typical pureblood dark amber. His face was angular, but when he smiled it lifted his cheeks and softened the angles. He smiled often.

“Should I call up Jisung?” Jaemin asked.

Jeno blew a breath up at his bangs, fluffing them up. They’d mostly dried now. “Probably. I was planning to drop by the med ward before class, and I’m not going to delay that for him.”

When it was like this, with both their auras retracted, Renjun could handle them. They felt like any other academy student, lounging around at home in t-shirts.

Just as they’d decided to start without Jisung, there was a knock at the door.

“It’s unlocked,” Jaemin called. Renjun realized, with great envy, that this entire suite was shared by Jaemin and Jeno.

Jisung burst in, his clothing disheveled, and his hair standing up on one side. It was not the Mark kind of disheveled. It was the kind of disheveled Renjun was much more familiar with, the roll out of bed disheveled.

“Sorry!” Jisung said. “I set two alarms, I swear. I don’t know how I slept through them.” He waved his hands around as he spoke, and his finger caught on an object on the shelf. There was a crash. A book had been knocked from the shelf.

He bent over to pick it up, but Jaemin said, “Don’t. Just leave it. I’ll get it later.”

“Sorry,” Jisung said again, with all the lackluster remorse of a repeat offender.

He sat next to Jaemin, who looped an arm around his shoulder. Jaemin shook his head. “One day I’m going to make you pay for everything you’ve damaged around here.”

Jisung didn’t dignify him with a response.

“Okay, now that we’re all here, tell us what happened,” Jeno said. It was the first thing he’d said to Renjun since Jaemin arrived.

Renjun told them everything he remembered from the professor’s meeting. He skipped over the parts about himself; they weren’t relevant. It didn’t take very long to get through the full retelling. When he finished, the room was quiet for a while.

“Demonic activity, huh?” Jaemin said.

“I think they’re just taking precautions. They aren’t sure it’s demons,” Renjun said.

“If it’s demoncraft, that would explain why Doyoung’s taking so long to recover,” Jaemin said.

Jeno nodded. “It could. The professors said he was going to recover soon?”

Even to a vampire, Renjun couldn’t offer false hope. “They said he was recovering well, but didn’t say it’d be soon.”

Jeno leaned back in his chair. His carefully composed mask slipped a bit, revealing a bleak expression. Jeno hadn’t really needed to ask, but hope is a foolish thing that way. Wouldn’t Renjun know about that?

“We haven’t heard about these other disappearances though,” Jaemin said. “Isn’t that weird? How can multiple pairs disappear without anyone knowing?”

“Maybe we do know about them,” Jisung said. He hadn’t spoken for most of the conversation, and Renjun had almost forgotten he was there.

“What do you mean?” Jeno asked.

“They said in one of the school assemblies that some of the pairs have been sent on long term missions. Maybe they’re the missing ones, and there are no long term missions.”

Renjun didn’t realize anyone paid attention during the school assemblies. Now that he thought about it, maybe he did remember the Chancellor saying something about missions. He looked at Jisung more closely. For some reason he hadn’t thought Jisung would be so observant.

“You have good memory,” Renjun said.

Jisung ducked his head under Renjun’s attention. “Not really,” he mumbled. His cheeks had gone a little pink. Renjun hadn’t known vampires could blush, pale and bloodless as they usually were.

It was almost. Cute?

Except vampires weren’t cute. Beautiful, elegant, even sexy? Fine. That was part of their species definition. But endearing? Somehow that seemed wrong.

Renjun clearly needed more sleep. It’d been a rough week.

“That’s all I know,” Renjun said. “So I should get going.”

“Wait,” Jeno said. “Tell me why you were in pain.”

Renjun knew immediately what he was referring to. There were only two times Jeno had seen him in pain, and one of those times Jeno had been the cause.

Jeno knew he knew, from the way he looked at Renjun, but he still added, “Why were you screaming, when you were with Doyoung? Was there really a cage of thorns, like you told Seo?”

So they had heard him.

Against his will, he felt heat creeping up his neck toward his face. He focused on his magic, and forced it back down angrily. He hadn’t wanted anyone to see that, not even Donghyuck, but as usual, things always worked out just the way he wanted.

“There was, and I told you why already. I was trying to transfer energy to him.”

“A witch told me transferring energy isn’t supposed to hurt you,” Jeno said, eyes narrowing.

It wasn’t supposed to, but many things that weren’t supposed to happen seemed to be happening with his magic these days. More than usual, which was saying something.

“Are you lying about transferring energy?”

Renjun would have liked to be lying. More and more, he felt like trying to transfer energy had been a mistake. He remembered the way the cage had shattered and dug into him, burning, burning. Burning so hot, about to consume him whole in flame. The memory brought on a phantom echo of the pain. His magic pulsed, sending a prickling sensation down his body, and he let out a gasp.

All three of the vampires looked at him, and though Jaemin at least had the decency to look concerned, there was a hunger there too.

That had been a prey noise.

“The cage of thorns made it hurt, okay?” Renjun said, louder than he had to. The hunger faded from their faces as they focused on what he said, and he tried not to let his relief show.

“You said you didn’t touch it. I remember that,” Jisung said. He really had good memory.

“Even though I didn’t, it still hurt me. There was something really wrong with whatever it was.”

They could hear the trueness of that in his voice, true and raw and scraping. If they hadn’t believed him then, they believed him now. Something had been very, very wrong with that cage of thorns. Even though he’d felt fine since that day, he didn’t want to think that the wrongness might be inside him now, lurking in wait to do whatever it’d done to Doyoung. Maybe he should’ve told Professor Seo.

But he remembered the way the professor had looked when he’d asked about it – that expression he couldn’t read, concern mixed with another emotion he couldn’t quite place.

“Fine,” Jeno said. “I believe you, for now.”

“So it’s okay if I go now?” Renjun asked.

The three vampires looked at each other. Something passed between them, and they must have reached an agreement, because Jaemin said, “Yeah, we’ll walk you out.”

“That’s fine. You don’t have to. I remember the way, I think.”

“I insist,” Jaemin said. “We insist, right guys?”

Jisung shook his head. “I need to get ready for school.” Jaemin frowned at him, but before he could say anything, Jisung grabbed his bag and made a quick escape.

“You really don’t have to bother,” Renjun said.

“It’s not a bother at all. Right, Jeno?” Jaemin said. Jeno gave him a look and Jaemin frowned again. “Right, Jeno?”

“Right,” Jeno said tonelessly.

They picked up their things, and went back the way Renjun had come from, down the elevators, through the common area, and out the hallway. There were more vampires in the common area now, and when they entered, Renjun could feel more than a few pairs of eyes note their arrival and scan him up and down. Here was another reason he wished he hadn’t come down with them; he should’ve known they would attract attention everywhere, even in their own home.

The two vampires he’d met earlier were still there. The girl smiled and waved at him. He chanced a wave back, and a few more heads turned, riveted by his action. He put his hand back down.

“Hurry up,” Jeno said. His eyes flicked to the girl and back, and his lip curled. “If you want to offer yourself to a vampire, do it on your own time.”

Renjun stared at Jeno, incredulous. “I don’t want to offer myself,” he hissed back.

“Whatever. It looks like you do to me,” Jeno said, and moved on ahead of them. Renjun continued after him, because it looked like there was only one way out and he had no choice, but he didn’t make an effort to catch up. Jaemin hung back with him, troubled.

“Sorry about that. He’s not usually so touchy,” Jaemin said. “He’s got a lot on his mind lately, with his brother.”

“So he’s not always like this? Good for him, I guess,” Renjun said. He understood that Jeno was going through a hard time, but even so each time they’d interacted it’d only been about what Jeno wanted. Jeno wanted answers or Jeno wanted knowledge and instead of asking he demanded. He demanded like it was his right, like it didn’t matter how it disrupted Renjun’s life, like he hadn’t even considered that Renjun might have a life to disrupt, and Renjun didn’t think that part of him was temporary.

“If by like this you mean cold and rude and prickly—” Renjun was thinking more along the lines of asshole, but that would have to do “—no, he’s not. He’s usually pretty likeable.”

Renjun must not have hidden his disbelief well enough, because Jaemin said, “No, seriously. Okay, he does take a while to warm up to strangers, but,” Jaemin leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “that’s because he’s shy.”

“Okay,” Renjun said, partially because he hoped it would stop Jaemin from talking about all the aspects of Jeno there were to like. He could care less.

“Honestly. I wouldn’t be friends with him if he were like this all the time. I am a literal ball of sunshine, after all. I wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

They exited the building, and made their way back down the path to the gate. Jeno fell back in line with them, on Jaemin’s other side. For the next few minutes, Jaemin talked about the some of the school activities he was involved in, while Renjun pondered how someone could call themselves a ball of sunshine without a hint of shame. Renjun found out that Jaemin made even less sense than he thought – it was like he’d gone out of his way to join activities that were useless for vampires. He was in the fortune-telling club, which needed magic and even to witches was a pretty useless field. Even the best fortune-teller was reliable less than half the time, which made them less useful than a coin toss but a whole lot more opinionated. Jaemin was also taking a cooking class, and that seemed even more pointless, since he couldn’t taste anything he cooked.

“According to my taste testers, I’ve improved a lot but I keep making things too sweet,” Jaemin said.

Renjun marveled that Jaemin had managed to make something edible, and more that such brave souls existed to help him get so far. He hoped that whoever they were, they were getting a great reward because they deserved it.

Jaemin’s chatter eased the awkwardness between the three of them. Jaemin asked Jeno about a test they’d taken. Renjun found out that Jeno liked math.

“Even with Stinfelder?” Renjun asked, shocked into speech. That had been the last math class Renjun had taken, the last that was required of them. Renjun supposed he should’ve had some understanding for the professor, who had to teach the same material in both the early morning for the witches and the late evening for the vampires, but his hatred of the class had overwhelmed any feelings of sympathy.

“Yeah, it was a good class,” Jeno said. That was the most disturbing thing Renjun had heard in a long time.

They reached the gate, and a different uniformed vampire opened it to let Renjun out.

“Thanks for coming by and telling us what happened,” Jaemin said.

“Yeah, thanks,” Jeno said.

The thanks were unexpected. For a moment he felt gratified, but then he remembered that he’d had no choice, and the feeling passed. They spoke as if he decided to come to them, had willingly shared information, but he knew and they knew and he knew they knew that there had never been any other option.

“Hope it helps,” Renjun said, because that was honest. He couldn’t say, ‘no problem’, or ‘anytime’.

“See you later,” Jaemin said. Jeno just lifted a hand in a wave.

“See you,” Renjun said. He didn’t say later, or soon, because he had no reason to. It was likely that this would be last time they’d talk in the remaining four years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do vampires have to live in a creepy, old-fashioned building? No. But in this fic they do. Well, some of them.
> 
> It took some time, but now everyone's on the same page! ish.


	6. change is hard [part 1]

Chenle had started to act differently around him. Chenle tried to hide it.

Renjun tried not to notice it. It was hard though, when he was hyperaware of it – it was what he’d been waiting for, fearing really, ever since that night Chenle had found out the truth. He couldn’t not notice it. He feared the opposite, that he was reading too much into things when nothing had changed, and so he tried to ignore the moments that he wasn’t sure were quite as they had been.

It wasn’t like things changed much, or dramatically.

Chenle didn’t have his guard up. He was open like usual, and they joked around like usual, and like usual, Chenle burst into that high-pitched noise he called laughter and Renjun called screeching. Usually that happened after they made jibes about people Chenle didn’t like. Chenle had an innocent kind of face, that seemed to persuade others he could do no wrong, but Renjun knew firsthand the joy he took at others’ expense. They deserved some of that, sure, but Chenle’s tongue could be poison.

He was kind of like Donghyuck in that way. They’d be a whole lot more similar if Donghyuck spent some effort to appear innocent and naïve on the outside. Renjun couldn’t imagine Donghyuck wanting to appear that way. It’d take some effort, he thought, and almost snorted out loud. Then again, Renjun thought with dismay, he could imagine Donghyuck putting in that effort and then some, if it would get him something he wanted. The image nauseated Renjun a little.

With Chenle, it wasn’t something forced. He appeared innocent because he was – in certain ways. He wasn’t naïve; it was hard to be with his place in vampire society. He was sincere, and he wanted to believe that their friendships and the people they were held more importance than the power and the politics, even though in the end it seemed like it’d be the power and politics that would dictate who they’d become. It was a dogma wasn’t stated aloud but rather reflected in the way they were treated. Renjun hadn’t questioned that dogma, but Chenle refused to believe it. That was his way of things.

So perhaps it was expected that Chenle accepted his humanness.

But acceptance had never meant that nothing would change. Renjun knew that. A drop of ink that hit water would change its color, and even if the resulting color was beautiful, it would not be what it had been.

It was the small things.

Chenle had stopped talking about excursions into the city, when vampire students would mingle among humans. Most of time, this led to an expected conclusion. The excursions were monitored, to make sure that none of vampires took too much blood. They didn’t want people in the city asking questions.

Even Chenle had been excited after his first excursion, and though he wasn’t crass about it the way some vampires were, he talked about it in broad strokes, with a dreamy look on his face. Through the years, there were a few times when he’d mention a human he’d met, with that same dreamy look.

“You would fall for the human instead of the other way around,” Donghyuck had said one of those times, and they’d spent the rest of the night bickering.

Chenle didn’t talk about those at all now, not even to say he was going. The excursions were scheduled twice a month, and open to all who wanted to join. When Renjun had asked him if he was going to the next one, there’d been an unusually long pause, before Chenle had stuttered, “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe not.”

This, and other moments of hesitation. Pauses where before Chenle could keep a thread of speech going for minutes at all time.

They’d read some sentence in the Human Studies textbook about human behavior, and Chenle would make a little gasp and stare at Renjun with wide eyes. Then catch himself, and cover his mouth and fix his eyes back down on the textbook.

When they had Human Studies together on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings, Chenle came with him more of the way home each time. He claimed he wanted to hang out longer, and “you’ve been neglecting me” (blatantly untrue), and “you spend too much time with Donghyuck” (probably true). By the end of the week he was walking Renjun to his doorstep.

Renjun lasted another week like this before he couldn’t take it anymore.

They stood in front of the door to his apartment building, its gray scratched surface framing their bodies. He rounded on Chenle. “I don’t need to be protected, Chenle. Stop being weird about this.”

Chenle froze, expression tinted with enough guilt that Renjun knew his suspicions had been correct.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chenle said, too fast and high-pitched. He’d never been a good liar.

“I’m talking about you walking with me all the way home, and avoiding every topic that even mentions humans, and acting all cautious around me, like you’re scared to hurt me. Like I’d get hurt by every little thing,” Renjun said. Renjun took a breath, blew it out. “It makes me feel like you think I’m weak or something.”

Chenle deflated. “I don’t think that, Renjun. I’d never think that.”

“Then why are you acting like this? I don’t expect you to forget about it, but I didn’t think it would affect you this much.”

“I’ve been trying so hard to be normal about it. But I—” Chenle gulped. “Sometimes we’re talking, and I think that if I say a certain thing I’ll sound just like that, like I…I don’t know, think less of you or something, and then I don’t know what to say, I just freeze up.”

“I don’t care if you sound like that. I’d rather you say what you want, even if you think I wouldn’t like it.”

“But I care about it,” Chenle said.

“That’s what I don’t like. I don’t want you to care so much. I get that you’re trying to be a good friend, but I’ll tell you if I don’t like something you say.”

“I—if that’s what you want, okay. I can’t promise I won’t overthink things – it’s hard right now. I’m sorry that it’s hard for me, but it is. But I’ll try.”

Renjun wished that it hadn’t come to this, a time when things were hard between them again. When they’d first met, it’d been hard not to overthink things. He couldn’t help but question it. Why would a vampire want to be friends with one of the lowest ranked witches in the year? There had to be a motive. Renjun had been the one to make things hard then.

He understood though, so he nodded. Trying was all he wanted.

“And this?” Renjun prompted.

“This?”

“The walking me home.”

“It’s on the way. That’s not really what I…”

Renjun leveled a look at Chenle, and said, “On the way to what? I know your apartment is in the other direction.”

Chenle sighed. “Okay, kind of. When I think about what I’ve heard people say about humans, and when I think of what they say and the way they say it, it makes me scared about what could happen. I can’t help wanting to make sure nothing bad happens. It’s not like I’m walking with you home to protect you, but I want to see with my own eyes that nothing’s happened.”

“I’m a witch, Chenle,” Renjun said.

“I know that,” Chenle said. “I’ve never questioned that.” He sounded a little stung. He knew that more than anyone except that Donghyuck.

“I am a human too. That’s something I can’t change, no matter what I want,” Renjun said, those words spoken fast. It wasn’t nonchalant, but with Chenle, Renjun didn’t have to be.

Chenle gazed at him, knowing in a way that felt too personal. They both faced that impasse, unable to change parts of themselves, but unable to accept them. Trying to move forward, but feeling like they were going around in circles.

“But you have to treat me like a witch. I need that from you.”

Chenle opened his mouth, maybe to protest that he was doing that, but he seemed to think better of it, and closed it again. He nodded, a slow dip of his head. “I understand.”

They stood there for another moment.

“I can still come over, right?” Chenle asked.

Renjun was sad that he’d had to ask, but that was where things stood for now. It was not that things were different, but rather that they’d been shifted a fraction out of alignment, and neither of them knew where the new boundaries were yet. “Yeah, anytime. If you don’t just come to the front door and then leave.”

* * *

Renjun pushed open the door. He was ready to crash on the couch.

The day had been a long one. He’d had Magic, and then two tests back to back. He might have bombed a Human Studies test for the first time. Maybe he should have paid attention when they said it was a test on ancient history between supernaturals and humans, not one of the human-specific topics they’d covered in much more detail in his middle school.

Then there was Magic. Since hearing what Park really thought about him, Renjun faced each class with a strange sense of dread. Nothing happened, and Park didn’t act differently from before. Maybe Park was even ignoring him. He hadn’t made Renjun come to the front of the class since, and hadn’t even commented when Renjun succeeded in conjuring a ball of flame that hovered above his hand. Usually there would’ve been congratulations for that, that’d make him wilt under his classmates’ attention as they once again wondered why someone would get praise for succeeding at the basics.

So there wasn’t anything to dread. He even should have felt grateful that he’d finally gotten free from Park’s notice, but the feeling lingered. That there was nothing made him feel more dread rather than less, as if these moments of relief existed only to throw him off guard.

Though the reality of it was that he was on edge and he didn’t have to be. It wore him out.

He was going to spread himself out on the couch and drag Donghyuck from his room and force him to watch garbage reality TV together. Donghyuck would complain about it, but he was the one who binge-watched episodes late at night in secret.

Then Renjun heard voices from the living room. There was Donghyuck’s, sarcastic and wholly familiar, and another one, equally animated but much less sarcastic. It shouldn’t have been familiar, but it was.

Renjun didn’t want it to be familiar.

He rounded the corner, and saw Donghyuck sitting on the beanbag, holding a glass of wine in his fingers. On their couch sat another boy with brown hair. Renjun took two large steps forward, bringing the boy’s profile into view, but he hadn’t need to. He already knew.

It was Jaemin.

Jaemin sat on their couch like he belonged there, as comfortable as when Renjun had seen him in his own place less than two weeks ago. A cup of water had been placed in front of him. It was untouched.

“Hey, you’re home,” Donghyuck said.

Jaemin raised an eyebrow. “So, you’re roommates?”

Renjun ignored him. He walked up to Donghyuck without preamble and dragged him up from his beanbag. “You. Kitchen. Now.”

“But my wine,” Donghyuck said as Renjun dragged him out of the room into the kitchen. Jaemin could see them from the couch, but Renjun closed the door behind them.

Renjun pointed at the door. “Explain,” he half-whispered, half hissed.

Donghyuck crossed his arms. “You took me away from my wine for this?”

“Damn it, Donghyuck. Explain,” Renjun bit out. Renjun had thought he was going to keep his cool, but as usual, Donghyuck was Donghyuck.

“Calm down,” Donghyuck said. He sounded annoyed, which Renjun didn’t think he had any right to be. “There’s nothing to explain. We’re friends and I invited him over.”

“You’re friends?” Renjun didn’t understand what he was hearing. “I thought you didn’t like them, remember?”

“You shouldn’t lump them all together like that, that’s not very nice. Also, that was weeks ago. That was before I found out he can rap.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You’re missing the big picture,” Donghyuck said. Yep, Renjun was going to lose his cool. “He can rap, _and_ he’s good looking. He’s got to join my club. Think about the possibilities.”

Renjun remembered Donghyuck’s boyband-covering music club, and decided he didn’t care about Donghyuck’s big picture.

“You didn’t have to bring him here. You didn’t even tell me.”

“Since when did I have to tell you I was bringing a friend over? And I messaged you. Probably.”

It was true they didn’t tell each other when they brought friends over, only if it was something more than that, but Renjun thought this was a special case. “You didn’t message me.”

“Okay. I thought about messaging you. Same thing. More importantly, I can’t kick him out now.”

Renjun grudgingly accepted that this was true.

“I’m going to my room then,” Renjun said, and turned, but Donghyuck caught his wrist.

He leaned in, more serious than before, and it was strange to see him so close without that mischievous glint in his eye. In a lower, quieter voice, he said, “You should join us.”

That made even less sense. Renjun jerked at his wrist but Donghyuck held tight. His fingers were warm against Renjun’s skin, still cold from outside.

“You can’t keep avoiding vampires forever, Renjun.”

“I’m not avoiding them. Chenle’s literally one of my best friends.”

“And he’s one of maybe two vampires you’re willing to look in the eye. We’re going to be in mixed classes next year. You can’t keep on like this.”

“Keep on like what, Donghyuck,” Renjun said.

“Keep on avoiding them,” Donghyuck repeated. “You think if you don’t talk to them, they won’t know you’re afraid? You’re so obvious, let me tell you. I can see it from a mile away.”

Renjun jerked his wrist out of Donghyuck’s grasp, with more force this time.

“You don’t get to tell me that,” Renjun said. A tremor ran through him. Donghyuck couldn’t be saying this to him. Not Donghyuck. Not him too. “Don’t tell me how to live my life.”

Donghyuck made a frustrated noise. “I’m not telling you how to live. I’m just saying to sit in the living room, have drink with us, and chat. To socialize. Give it a couple tries at least, and if you’re still not okay with him after that, then fine.”

Renjun hesitated. He didn’t like the idea of socializing more than he had to, but the truth was that he wasn’t ready for mixed classes, and instead of doing something about it he’d pushed it to the back of his mind.

Then Donghyuck added, “I’m trying to help you.” And Renjun’s moment of hesitation passed.

“I never asked for your help,” he said.

“Would you ask, even if you needed it?” At Renjun’s silence, Donghyuck scoffed. “You know the answer to that. Fourth year’s almost here. You know you need to change something.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.”

Donghyuck raised his eyes to the ceiling and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not deciding for you. I’m telling you what I see, and since you’re not going to do something about it, I tried. The choice is still yours.”

“Doesn’t seem like it, since you didn’t even tell me he was coming,” Renjun said.

Donghyuck’s brows drew together. “Why is this such a bad thing? I’ve talked with Jaemin enough to know he’s a pretty cool guy. Maybe cooler than you, since he wouldn’t get mad over a small thing like this.”

Renjun’s fingers curled at his sides. “Then why don’t you go hang out with your cooler new vampire friend then?”

Donghyuck’s mouth dropped open. “I can’t believe you’re making such a big deal out of this.”

Renjun didn’t say anything.

“So even this is too much for you?” Donghyuck said.

“It is,” Renjun said, and pulled open the kitchen door.

Jaemin hadn’t moved from his position on the couch. He looked at them, and his eyes widened a fraction at the way they stood apart, taut with tension.

Renjun stalked out through the living room past Jaemin. He didn’t care that Jaemin saw. He grabbed his backpack and headed toward his room without saying a word to him.

Donghyuck caught up to Renjun just as he stepped across the threshold into his room.

“You’re a coward, Renjun Huang,” he said, low and angry and so very Donghyuck. He would have the last word if it killed him.

Renjun shut the door in Donghyuck’s face.

Donghyuck’s feet stayed outside the door for a moment more, visible through the crack under the door, then they turned. There were footsteps that grew distant, and after that voices.

“Is everything ok?” Jaemin.

“Yeah, he’s just tired.”

The door to the hall must have been shut because there was a clunk and the voices became muffled.

Renjun sank to the ground, and closed his eyes.

* * *

Donghyuck was stubborn. Renjun knew that. He’d always known that side of Donghyuck, even before they lived together.

The problem was, Renjun was stubborn too.

Each time they fought it was like this, a cold war where Donghyuck wanted to talk it out but couldn’t seem to say anything that wasn’t an insult, and Renjun refused to speak to him except for parting shots in the common area when they had to run into each other. Renjun would hole himself up in his room, and Donghyuck would continue to go where ever he pleased in the apartment, adamant on not letting it make him act different.

They’d do this until one of them cracked. Renjun suspected that was usually him, because he could only keep up his silence for so long, but Donghyuck’s ability to think of new insults was close to limitless. He didn’t really remember. It’d been a long time since they’d fought. They argued often, but not in a real fight kind of way.

Renjun tried to remember how they’d fixed things last time. That had been, almost two years ago?

He didn’t remember what they’d fought about, but he did remember coming home to Donghyuck lying on the couch, his head buried in pillows. He’d been making a weird snuffling sound, muffled by the pillows. It had taken Renjun a long time, longer still because he’d been angry, to realize that Donghyuck was crying. The muffled noises were him sniffling, and trying to hide it, and failing.

That had shaken Renjun from the resentment he’d been nursing on the way home, because Donghyuck, his Donghyuck, was crying.

He’d helped Donghyuck sit up, and when he’d calmed down, Renjun found that Johnny had broken his heart. Big, hapless Johnny, who treated everything like a joke in his good-natured way, including Donghyuck’s crush on him. It wasn’t the first time Renjun had seen Donghyuck put out by it, but it was the first time he’d seen tears.

“I confessed,” Donghyuck said. “I told him I really like him. That I really really like him. I was so serious he had to know I was serious about it. But all he said was, ‘Yeah, me too Haechan. You’re like the little brother I never had and probably would not wish on anyone.’ Then he had the fucking _audacity_ to chuckle and pat me on the head.”

Johnny probably still didn’t know that he’d broken Donghyuck’s heart. Though if anyone asked Donghyuck about it now, he sighed dramatically and said, “It was puppy love.”

That day Renjun and Donghyuck had binged a pint of ice cream and laughed at Donghyuck’s swollen face. After that things had been right between them, the apologies known even before they were spoken.

There was no Johnny to break Donghyuck’s heart now, and Renjun was damned if he’d be the one to crack this time.

When they’d passed each other in the living room this morning, it’d been:

Donghyuck. “Are you still going to be a child and give me the silent treatment today?”

Renjun, glaring at him.

Donghyuck. “So that’s how it’s going to be?”

Renjun had gone to his room.

* * *

Donghyuck was stubborn. Renjun knew that.

So perhaps he was expecting it when he came home again to a voice he now recognized. Subconscious self-forced recognition, his sense of self-preservation kicking in. Donghyuck would call it paranoia.

So he wasn’t surprised when he saw brown hair visible over the top of the sofa. It looked incredibly soft.

The head turned at his footsteps, and the eyes met his.

“Hi Renjun,” Jaemin said. He smiled, another one of those charming smiles that to Renjun was just a touch off genuine. Renjun didn’t feel that way because Jaemin was a vampire, or at least he told himself so. Jaemin smiled at everyone like that; Renjun was pretty sure he’d even smile at a rock like that if it was placed in front of him. There was no way he really felt that happy to see everyone, and he didn’t have a reason to be happy to see Renjun.

(Renjun would never admit this, but even though he thought that way he’d been maybe a little, tiny bit, almost not at all swayed by it.)

Apparently Jaemin hadn’t been put off by the cold reception from before. Renjun was going to have to try harder. It was a fine line he toed. He didn’t want to make an enemy, but he wanted to create a space between them that Jaemin wouldn’t feel like crossing.

Ignoring someone was usually enough for that. One look at Jaemin though, and he knew it hadn’t been enough.

He could already tell from how easily Jaemin had become Donghyuck’s friend that this was going to be a hassle. Something about him had won Donghyuck over, and it couldn’t have been the smiling or even his boyish good looks. Donghyuck appreciated beauty, sure, but their school was full of lookers. Donghyuck was one of them himself, and he had astronomically high standards. Donghyuck wasn’t someone to fall for superficial tricks, and despite outward appearances, he wasn’t easy to get close to. He was easy enough to become friends with on a surface level, but it was unusual that he was trying to become better friends with Jaemin – inviting him over to their place meant that Jaemin had passed some bar of Donghyuck’s.

That alone could have been taken as a mark of confidence for Jaemin. If Renjun was considering what Donghyuck had said. If he was going to give Jaemin a chance – he cut off this train of thought.

He wasn’t.

Even Donghyuck could make mistakes.

“Jaemin,” Renjun said. He didn’t say hi. Jaemin’s smile wavered. Renjun kept it neutral, polite but cool. He didn’t pretend to offer friendship, and Jaemin could tell.

Donghyuck was sitting in the armchair this time. He had one arm under the other, propping it up, and another glass of red wine in one hand. He took a sip out of the glass, and said in a sweet voice, “Care to join us Renjun?” He swirled the liquid around in his glass. The wine had already stained his lips, a dusting of purple.

In an equally sweet voice, Renjun said, “I’ll pass. I’m busy with that assignment for Magic.”

Donghyuck tilted his head to the side. The wine glass tilted to a precarious angle in his hand. “Oh, the one due next Tuesday that you haven’t started yet? You’re busy with it now? Weird how that timing works out.”

“How you would know I haven’t started?”

Donghyuck looked up at him from under hooded eyes. “Why, you haven’t come running to me for help yet, so of course you haven’t.” It was the same pleasant tone as before, and Renjun knew Donghyuck was only saying this because he was kind of buzzed and still angry.

It still hurt. Donghyuck had to be angrier than he’d thought if he would say that in front of Jaemin. Angry enough that he’d probably wanted it to hurt. Jaemin looked between them, confused.

Renjun had the urge to knock the wine glass out of Donghyuck’s hand, and have it spill over his white t-shirt.

Instead he smiled at Donghyuck. Unlike Donghyuck, he wasn’t about to do this in front of Jaemin. He wasn’t going to show either of them that the words had hurt him. He tried for the same sweet voice as before, but it didn’t come out that way. “Next time, I’ll remember that’s what you think of me,” he said. “Have we ever been equals?” As he said it, he knew he had to leave the room. He couldn’t keep this up. He didn’t know why he’d said that last part. He wasn’t the tipsy one.

He didn’t want to hear the answer.

The glass Donghyuck had been rotating in slow circles stilled. Even in his haze, Donghyuck sat up straighter and looked at Renjun. That seriousness was there again, the same seriousness from when he’d caught Renjun’s wrist in the kitchen.

“Renjun,” Donghyuck said, but it was too late. Renjun was already moving down the hallway and across to his room.

Donghyuck didn’t call him back.

Renjun didn’t expect him to, but a part of him wished Donghyuck had.

* * *

Chenle and Renjun had settled back to normal, as normal as if could be after a few weeks.

Chenle adjusted faster than Renjun could have hoped, but he’d always been quick on the uptake. It was a relief. Without Donghyuck to talk to, Renjun found himself spending more and more time outside the apartment. That usually meant more and more time with Chenle.

There were still moments in Human Studies when Chenle would steal a glance at Renjun when he thought Renjun wasn’t looking. Renjun supposed that he could finally complain about all the small things in Human Studies that weren’t wrong but somehow rubbed him the wrong way, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

One day after class, Chenle asked him, “It really didn’t bother you, what they said in class today?”

Renjun thought that could refer to various different parts of class, and he had to rack his brain to remember the details. After a thought, he guessed what Chenle was talking about.

They’d been on a unit about relations between supernaturals and humans for the past month. It sucked for Renjun because he actually had to study now. He couldn’t cruise through the class like he’d been doing all year.

Today they’d gone over the Law of Three Orders, where both the Council of Night and the head of the witches had agreed on a policy to prevent unneedful harm to humans. It’d been the first time in their history where a penalty was enacted for server injury to or death of humans.

The format today had been different from the usual hour of droning, where the professor read off some papers she brought into class. She probably hadn’t felt like talking so much, so it’d been half an hour of lecture and discussion format for the rest of class. The topic of discussion had been the pros and cons of the law.

In short, the pros: it kept humans from becoming suspicious, and humans had their merits. They provided useful resources to vampire and witch communities.

The cons: humans were overpopulating anyway, and until other laws were enacted this law made it easy to make false accusations against other witches and vampires.

Chenle was probably not referring to all of that. He probably meant the part of the ‘discussion’ when one of the second years had said “What a burden, when humans are so fragile.”

And one of the fourth years had responded, “That’s why we need the law though. Besides, when they’re so weak and helpless, isn’t that adorable? I think it’s super cute.”

That had derailed the entire discussion into a back and forth of whether humans were objectively cute or not. And if they were cute, what made them cute, and could they really be cuter than a witch or vampire? Turned out some people had strong opinions on that.

The professor had needed to remind them that the topic of the discussion was the Law of Three Orders, and remind them also that while they could find humans as cute as they liked, they’d do well to remember that humans had created not-so-cute weapons of mass destruction neither magic nor vampiric powers could stop.

That had drained the excitement from the room.

“It didn’t bother me,” Renjun said. He was used to it. Maybe more than a little desensitized, because he’d found the whole talk more funny than anything. Especially when the professor’s comment had sobered up the room.

Chenle nodded. He opened his mouth again, then seemed to think better of it.

“Just spit it out,” Renjun said.

“Does it ever bother you?” Chenle asked, with a hesitation that wasn’t like him.

Renjun’s first instinct was to say no. It was easier that way. Saying it out loud felt like some kind of admission, as if by saying it he was saying he couldn’t handle the words in a lecture, or printed letters in some worn-down book. That he couldn’t handle something so small as that. That the years he’d spent becoming used to the way of things, learning to handle himself, would be for nothing.

As if saying it would make him the problem, the one who was reading between the lines when there was nothing to read. He’d tried so hard not to be like that.

But trying not to be bothered didn’t make it true. He could tell Chenle had put thought into the question, had agonized over it maybe. He wanted to give him a fair answer.

So he said, “Yeah, sometimes.”

He felt guilty saying it. He couldn’t help that, though it was better with Chenle.

“Does it happen a lot?” Chenle asked.

“Not really.” Not anymore. “If I let everything bother me, I wouldn’t make it here.”

Chenle laughed at that, not his usual high-pitched laughter. It was softer, with a bitter tang. He understood.

“Isn’t that the truth?” he said.

* * *

When Renjun and Donghyuck had passed each other in the living room this morning, it’d been:

Donghyuck. “You’ve got an ugly sweater, Renjun. Are you ready to talk or is your fashion taste just going to get worse?”

Renjun. “You’ve got an ugly mug, Donghyuck, but you can’t fix that.”

“Oh so we’re talking today?”

Renjun had gone to his room.

* * *

In the med ward, Doyoung opened his eyes.

“Jeno?” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And a wild Jaemin appears. We'll see if he gets to stick around. 
> 
> For some reason this chapter was harder to write than usual even though it's shorter and not as much happens in it *cries*
> 
> Also, sorry for replying to comments so late as I usually do. I promise I really appreciate them, I'm just terrible at thinking of replies.


	7. change is hard [part 2]

Renjun found himself standing outside Donghyuck’s door, again. He didn’t know why he was there.

He didn’t want to talk to Donghyuck, and even if he did, Donghyuck was asleep.

Donghyuck’s special advanced curriculum meant he had to get up hours earlier than Renjun some days. On those days it was easy to miss each other, even if they weren’t trying to.

“You haven’t come running to me for help yet,” Donghyuck had said.

Renjun didn’t want to talk to Donghyuck, but at the same time, he wanted to barge into his room, take him by the shoulders, and shake him. Demand to know, was that the truth, was that what he really thought every time Renjun had asked him about magic? But if he did, Renjun wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about the other questions he didn’t want to know the answers to – had he been that needy, was he really so useless on his own? Did Donghyuck really think he was a coward?

It was Donghyuck’s anger talking, Renjun tried to reason. But it seemed like he was lying to himself if he thought that. Donghyuck wasn’t much of a liar, not when he was angry.

“You haven’t come running to me for help yet,” he’d said.

Renjun went back to his room.

* * *

It turned out Renjun was a liar. Not on purpose; he hadn’t tried to be one. It just turned out that way.

The assignment he’d told Donghyuck he was busy with sat on his desk, still untouched. He’d intended on starting it. Really, he had. But he’d been angry and frustrated still then, and he knew how well that usually turned out, and a day to let himself cool down, put himself in the right mindset to complete the assignment, and think about how he should start, that had seemed like the smart move at the time.

So he’d managed to avoid starting on it for two days now. Because each time he looked at it he thought he still wasn’t feeling up to it, and hey, he couldn’t afford another blown up plant.

Plus he came home tired, and it was going to be difficult, and tired was almost the same as angry and frustrated when it came to magic, and—

So he might have been stalling.

A little.

He didn’t want to say he dreaded it. It felt stupid, to say he felt dread about what for now was three sad looking seeds sitting in a glass globe of water no bigger than his hand. Dread was too strong of a word to use. It was more a faint and friendly sense of impending doom. Or simply, pessimism.

Growth magic didn’t come easy to him. Magic didn’t come easy in general, but this was different. Not easy usually meant that he needed more time and effort, and that he’d struggle and fail once or twice. But even then, he’d always felt like he was headed in the right direction, and that at least the most basic version of whatever they were learning was in his grasp if he just kept pushing himself. It might have taken him minutes to light a candle when it should’ve taken seconds, and longer still to change ice to water to gas, but he had been able to do it. He hadn’t been able to shine a light that would brighten up a dark room like the sun’s rays, but he had been able to emit a pale glow like that of his cell phone screen, enough to see by.

With growth magic, even the basics felt like groping in the dark. He knew he was doing it wrong, but he wasn’t sure how to make it right, or what right would mean.

He saw that even Joowon had been able to make a plant rise from dirt and sprout a leaf in one concentrated stream of magic. It took a long time, the stream was very weak, and Joowon had clenched his teeth the whole time. His eyes had been squinted, forehead creased, and mouth pulled back in the kind of grimace that people had when they were trying to get a shit out but couldn’t and people waiting outside the toilet stall had started getting suspicious. But the fact remained, he had been able to do it.

The best Renjun could do apparently, at least without causing a plant to self-destruct, was get it to creep up a couple centimeters at a time. It was almost worse that he could see what it should look like all around him, because even when he saw that stream of magic running steady from his classmates’ hands to their plants, he couldn’t figure out how to make his do that. This time he didn’t feel like trying harder would be enough.

At least his magic behaved the same as it always had. There were no more exploding plants. The dark lines flickering in his magic didn’t seem bigger or darker anymore, as they had right after that day with the vampire in the forest. They must have returned to normal, and he brushed off the passing thought that he might have gotten used to it. He knew his magic better than that. Probably.

This assignment was the last in the unit on growth, and growth was their last unit of the year, so Renjun just needed something passable. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to be easy. Because it was the last assignment of the year, Park had also made it the most difficult assignment of the year. Park had said, “It’ll be a challenge. I want to see you stretch yourselves and be creative. Surprise me.”

Renjun decided to pass on being creative. Park would be surprised enough if he brought in the completed assignment.

Donghyuck had already finished. The bastard had left his glass globe out in the living room by the TV, in a place Renjun had to pass by every day.

Donghyuck’s seeds had sprouted into vines that spiraled out of the mouth of the glass globe, forming a mass that built on top of itself. The whole form seemed large enough to collapse on itself, but the layers of vines gave it the needed structure to hold itself up. It was a life-size rendition of Park, leafy pants around his ankles, a stream of leaf piss dangling from his very leafy and very detailed yet miniscule genitalia. The vines even rendered the details of Park’s face, which was twisted in that unmistakable and unique pleasure of relief.

Renjun felt half-impressed, and half like he wanted to wash his eyes out.

He didn’t even want to look at his own globe, but he had to start sometime. With some reluctance, he reached inside himself. He pulled out some magic, and flung it without much hope at the seeds. One of the seeds split and a thin green tendril peeked its head out from the side of it.

There. He’d started.

Renjun screwed the lid back on the top of the globe. He’d continue later. Really.

* * *

“Jeno?”

Jeno looked up. Doyoung had turned his head so that he was looking at Jeno. His eyes were open.

Jeno didn’t believe it at first. He was almost afraid to believe it. If it wasn’t real, he didn’t think he was ready for the disappointment.

It was a night like any of the others he’d sat in the med ward, his unbeating dead heart tight in his chest. A morning now, actually, since the deeper darkness of night had lightened to gray. He’d been in the med ward for a couple hours after his classes.

Jaemin came by earlier and handed him a bag of blood like the ones they stocked up in human hospitals. Jeno didn’t know where he’d gotten it, and he didn’t ask.

Jaemin passed it over with a look of disgust at the bag.

“Take this, and I hope it tastes as shitty as it looks, so you remember not to skip meals,” Jaemin said.

Jeno hadn’t remembered that he was thirsty until Jaemin passed him the bag, which could be dangerous. He took the bag and ripped the top open. He put it to his lips and tipped the contents in, gulping them down while he held his nose with his other hand. He forced himself to finish it even though it did a better job of making him gag than quenching his thirst.

When he finished, he wiped his mouth and grimaced. He tossed the empty bag in a trash can by the door.

“It does taste like shit.” Then, against his better judgment, “Where’s that from?” The blood smelled old, and it was too sweet, with a nasty bitter aftertaste.

“You don’t want to know,” Jaemin said, and Jeno’s stomach churned unhappily. “You better get used to it, because that’s all you’re going to get from me from now on if you keep this up. I’m tired of trying to find someone for you every time, just because you can’t remember to do it for yourself. And every time I do get someone to come, and by the way it’s hard to find witches at this time of night, there’s some reason why they aren’t good enough for you. If you’re going to be picky, you need to be better about self-management. You of all people know that. I don’t care that your control is good. What if your family gets wind of this?”

“I know. I’m sorry,” Jeno said. He thought Jaemin was overreacting a little – he wasn’t that picky. He just had standards. He was being reckless though. It was one of the basic rules to feed enough to avoid losing control. Another was to feed discretely enough to avoid attracting notice among humans. Among witches, discretion was less important, but the rest still applied.

It was hard to care about the rules when Doyoung lay prostate in front of him. The rules all vampires had to live by, and the stricter rules of his family. Those rules hadn’t protected Doyoung from whatever had happened to him. Still, even without the rules, Jeno didn’t want to lose control, and he never had, not to bloodlust. He wasn’t that close even now, but Jaemin had always been the more careful one.

The difference was that Jaemin wanted to be his family’s heir. Jeno didn’t. Doyoung should have been the heir, and had been, until after the second marriage and Jeno was born.

Jeno had never lost control to bloodlust, but there were other ways to lose control. Even as a child, Jeno’s power had been undeniable. More undeniable perhaps, because he was a child and he didn’t care about control. When he was angry, he used his aura to force others to do what he wanted, and if he couldn’t do that, he used it to lash out at them.

He’d been less than five when he fought with Doyoung – an ordinary sibling fight like any of their other fights, except… All he remembered was being angry enough to break the cardinal rule of their household, not to use their auras on another family member.

Most of the details were a blur to him now, but he remembered in icy clarity the moment his father walked in to find Doyoung forced to his knees in front of Jeno. He would always remember that moment.

Jeno remembered thinking he’d been caught. He remembered the taste of his own fear as his father’s face set into stern lines, because he’d been a child enough to think there was nothing more terrifying than punishment for breaking the rules. He remembered the shine on his father’s brown leather shoes.

His father had walked around so that he was standing between them, and the side of one of the shoes had gleamed with the light of the moon. His father had stopped, and struck Doyoung across the face.

After that day, Jeno had been made heir. He hadn’t understood what that meant then. He hadn’t understood even when he saw Doyoung next, carrying his belongings out of their shared room.

“You’re heir now,” was all Doyoung had said, looking past Jeno. It had been the first time Jeno couldn’t tell what Doyoung was thinking.

Doyoung and his mother had been moved to a smaller room in the side of the house. Doyoung should’ve hated Jeno. Doyoung’s mother had hated Jeno.

Maybe there was a part of Doyoung that had resented Jeno. It would have been hard not to. But Doyoung had never shown much sign of it aside from the day he’d walked out of their shared room and out their father’s favor into his new life.

Doyoung had always been kind and good to him, a brother and a friend, and he’d had no reason to be.

Jeno wondered sometimes if Doyoung thought about what Jeno had taken away from him. But it was too late to change what had happened. All Jeno could do was swear to himself he would never lose control of himself like that again. Not his aura, or his power, or his thirst.

Jeno would follow his father into a position on the Council of Night. He’d join a training squadron for some time, and be given some missions that’d look good for a future Council member but weren’t a danger to his life. If Doyoung had been his father’s heir, he would never have been sent so far out, and he wouldn’t be here in the med ward, with Jeno looking over him.

Jeno rubbed his face. He was tired.

“It’s not your fault,” Jaemin said. Jaemin always understood too much.

“Try to take care of yourself,” he continued, when Jeno didn’t respond. “Is there a reason why you don’t call up whatever witch you’ve been getting blood from lately? It’s got to be better than that.” Jaemin made another disgusted face in the direction of the discarded blood bag.

“I cut him off a week ago.”

Jaemin groaned. “Why? Please tell me you had a good reason.”

“He wants fun, and I can’t give him that right now.” Jeno didn’t mention that the last time he’d gone looking for that witch, he had been looking for fun. Or release at least, to get his mind off things. But somehow it hadn’t been fun, even though that witch knew how to make it fun, and the blood had been good, and Jeno usually had a good time. He’d wanted something else.

“Look, I can send over one of mine. She’s kind of into you, and she just wants to share blood. She doesn’t care about anything else,” Jaemin said.

“I don’t want to share with you.” The thought made Jeno want to gag again.

“Hey, don’t look so disgusted. I was just offering. I wouldn’t if you were doing what you’re supposed to and taking care of yourself.”

“Okay, I get it. I’ll do better.”

Jaemin looked at him hard. “You’d better, or I’m siccing her on you. Or some other witch who wants to get in your pants.”

“I thought you were supposed to be my friend and protect me from those types.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m doing you a favor, being such a good friend as I am, and giving you a warning.”

Jeno shook his head. “Besides, just because I drink their blood doesn’t mean they can ‘get in my pants’,” he said.

“Ah, you’ve changed, Jeno Lee.”

Jeno snorted. “Or maybe I’m not a horny teen anymore.”

“Yeah, congrats, you’re a horny adult now.”

“Should you really be saying that?”

Jaemin shrugged. “Takes one to know one.”

Jeno thought that maybe he really was maturing out of that phase in his life. That would explain why he’d gotten tired of the most recent witch, when before he would have been into the passion and the blood enough that he’d only have cared who it was afterwards.

Though if that was true, that didn’t explain why… last time…

In his mind, an image flashed, of a pale thin neck tilted back, and a voice hot and breathy against his cheek.

“I don’t want you, I want this.”

With delicate, long fingers pulling his own collar to the side, and the beat, beat, beat of the pulse that before Jeno realized had been under his lips. And that scent…

Jeno played it back over in his head. It wasn’t like him to get so close to losing control, and so he forced himself to review it, even though instead of getting closer to figuring out why, he kept thinking of the curve of the witch’s neck. What would he taste like? Then Jeno felt annoyed that he’d think about that. Probability dictated that he’d taste like the rest of them. Witch blood had a spice to it, but aside from that, it was like human blood. There was a range of flavor, and yes, he had his preferences, but it wasn’t like any particular individual was _that_ different from the rest.

Like Jaemin said, he hadn’t been taking great care of himself. He had been hungrier than he should have been that night. That was the logical reason. Even so, a part of him felt like he should have been able to push away the witch. He hadn’t even been in the mood to feed.

Maybe he’d been worse about self-management than he thought.

And that night, that time, it’d been too sudden.

That was a big part of it. Usually he could tell by body language what he was getting into, and if their body language didn’t give it away, then their pulse would.

Renjun had been cagey and uncomfortable from the moment he stepped into their room. He’d sat stiff on the couch, his shoulders a little hunched and his arms wrapped around himself. Anyone could have been able to tell that his body language didn’t say anything other that that he didn’t want to be there.

That didn’t really make sense to Jeno. He’d thought he was being friendlier, even though he didn’t like to put in that effort for strangers, and he’d been pretty sure Renjun was interested in him. Why else would he have tried to get his attention at the party? Even if Renjun wasn’t interested in him, he didn’t have a reason to look so much like he wanted to leave.

Then there was Renjun saying that he could feel auras. Jeno had almost laughed at him – if you were going to make up a lie, at least make it believable – until he realized Renjun hadn’t been faking it.

While Jeno had still been reeling from the impossibility of it, there Renjun had been, touching his face. No warning signs. One moment recoiling, curling in on himself, almost angry, and the next, pulling Jeno toward him, other emotions running across his face that Jeno hadn’t been able to read. Not entirely. But one thing had been certain, that Jeno knew well from experience.

He’d wanted Jeno.

Jeno hadn’t been ready. That must have been why the instinct to bite hit so strong. It was a moment of madness.

“ _I want this.”_

Jeno felt a pain in his lower lip. His canines had extended, and his left one had pricked him.

He almost cursed.

Then he heard Doyoung’s voice, saying his name.

“Where am I?” Doyoung asked when Jeno looked up at him. His voice was weak but steady.

Jeno couldn’t speak for a while. He didn’t cry, and if his eyes had a watery shine, he’d claim it was the light. He swallowed.

“You’re in the med ward,” Jeno said, when he could speak. He didn’t trust that he could say much more.

Doyoung’s eyes roved around the room, registering the white walls and windows. Thick curtains were drawn over the windows, thicker than the usual ones, because Doyoung was still part of their family, and accidentally burning to death the son of a councilor would’ve been a bad look. Well, he probably wouldn’t have burned to death, but in his weakened state, sunlight would hurt him.

Doyoung’s eyes stopped at the door and his lip curled. Jeno was relieved to see that display of emotion, even if it looked like disgust. Jeno followed his gaze to see Ten standing in the doorway, in his white nurse’s uniform.

Ten was one of the nurses on rotation to check in on Doyoung. He had his shifts on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and he would come in to fix the IV drip, check the machines, and respeak the spells that encouraged Doyoung’s body to heal itself. Jeno remembered him more than the other ones because he had a shorter temper and was not afraid to kick Jeno out of the room if he said a word out of line. Even if that word was hello and Ten just didn’t want anyone to talk to him.

They said his healing magic was one of the best out of the nurses though, so Jeno grudgingly let it pass.

One time Jeno really must have been tired. When he came in he saw Ten through the door, and he imagined he saw Ten stop in the middle of working and smooth out a crease between Doyoung’s brows.

Like all the nurses assigned to Doyoung, Ten looked haggard. He was the only one of the original set that hadn’t rotated off to other patients yet.

“He’s awake again? Why didn’t you ring for me?” Ten asked.

“Ten,” Doyoung said, his lip curling more. His voice was weak, but the ward was quiet enough to make the word clear.

Ten froze. His mouth parted slightly.

“You… you’re awake?” he asked, without the demanding tone Jeno had come to expect of Ten. He was quiet, almost uncertain.

Doyoung rolled his eyes. “Obviously,” he said, with a little more strength.

Jeno looked between them. “Do you know each other?”

The uncertainty that had passed over Ten vanished. “Unfortunately, yes,” Ten said, and strode into the room. Ten’s voice was curt as he asked Doyoung his pain level. Jeno was relieved that Doyoung wasn’t in any pain, but his aura still felt so weak. Ten checked if Doyoung could move his head side to side, and lift his hands and arms. He put a finger under Doyoung’s eye and pulled the skin down, and made Doyoung open his mouth and looked down his throat. He made a few notes, and then did his usual work with the machines, IV drip, and magic. Doyoung glared at him at first, but apparently was too tired to keep this up. After a few minutes, his gaze grew distant. He jerked away slightly when Ten’s magic passed over him. Ten made no mention of Doyoung’s missing witch partner.

“I’m going to inform the doctors. They’ll come check in on him. They might bring a couple of the professors too. Try to keep him awake if he’s up to it,” Ten said to Jeno.

It was no use. No more than a minute after Ten left, Doyoung closed his eyes again.

* * *

Renjun found himself outside a familiar side door to a familiar library. He hadn’t intended to go there. He’d been wandering around campus, trying to avoid thinking about fixing things with Donghyuck by thinking about how to finish the assignment, but thinking about the assignment made him think about Donghyuck’s finished assignment in their living room. Then, in spite of himself, he’d miss the way Donghyuck joked around, and he’d be back to trying not to think about Donghyuck again.

He held the glass globe in his hand. He’d managed to make all three seeds sprout and grow into small vines that bunched together under the metal lid, but at the current rate he’d need at least a week to grow them large enough to pass, let alone fulfill the more challenging part of the assignment – molding the vines into a shape of their choice.

Originally he was thinking of trying for a circle, but now he was debating if three stick straight lines would count as a pass. A line was a shape, right? Though at this point, he wasn’t sure if he could make the vines grow in straight lines if he wanted to. They certainly didn’t look like they wanted to be straight lines.

He wondered if he could make some accident happen to the globe and get an extension. “Professor, my non-existent pet ate my inedible glass globe. Can I get an extension?” Even imagining it made him feel stupid.

Somehow, in the midst of this, he found his way to the side entrance to the Human Studies Library. He saw a familiar face sitting at the desk visible from the door, bent over a stack of papers.

Renjun raised his hand and knocked on the door.

Mark looked up, his hand still scribbling something on one of the papers. When he saw Renjun, the hand veered off the page.

Looking more pained than usual, Mark put his pen down, went over to the door, and opened it a fraction.

“What are you doing here?” Mark hissed. “You said last time was the last time.”

“I always say that, Mark,” Renjun said.

“Can you at least not say that to my face?” Mark said. He looked around and behind Renjun. “Are people chasing you again? What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on. Maybe I just missed your company?”

Mark started to close the door.

Renjun wedged his foot in the opening of the door before Mark could draw it closed. “Wait. Actually, I need your help.”

Mark frowned.

“And I missed your company. Please?”

Mark sighed, but he opened the door. “I guess it’s useless to tell you that this is the last time,” he muttered.

When they were both seated, Mark behind his Library assistant’s desk with one hand on top of the other under his chin, and Renjun in front of him, Mark said. “So. Assuming this is something that I can help with, what makes you think I’m going to help you? I don’t do favors for free.”

Renjun didn’t really want to do this to Mark. He liked Mark. “What were you doing at the vampire apartment?”

As Renjun had expected, Mark stiffened. He reminded Renjun of a deer caught in headlights.

“Nothing. I mean, a project.”

“A project where you get bitten?” Renjun said.

Mark’s hand jumped to his throat, conveniently hidden by a turtleneck. He was so obvious. He realized his mistake too late, and jerked his hand back to the desk.

“You were there too,” Mark said. “You know why I was there just like I know why you were there. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Renjun said, leaning his head back just enough. The neckline of his sweater went down to his collarbones, so he knew Mark saw no sign of a bite.

“You were really there for school?” Mark asked, disbelieving.

Renjun crossed his hands. He looked at Mark innocently.

“Tell me, Mark. Are you in a relationship with one of the vampires there?”

Whatever Mark answered, he was trapped. It wasn’t something that fit with his straight-A student never-broke-a-rule-except-to-help-a-friend reputation, and Renjun bet on the fact that he didn’t want people to find out.

“I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

Mark looked at his hands, now folded in front of him. “It’s—”

“For fun?” That would be even better.

“No,” Mark said, more vehement than Renjun expected. Then his face crumpled, and Renjun was taken aback. “No, it’s, I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. It’s not serious, but it’s complicated.”

Mark looked at his hands again. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

Renjun almost felt too bad to continue, but he remembered his pathetic vines floating in the water. He could feel sorry for Mark later. “I just want a small favor,” he said.

Mark raised his head. For a second, Renjun felt a chill. In that second, he remembered that Mark was top of his class, which made him as dangerous as Donghyuck, even if he didn’t have a reputation for using his magic for his own ends. Renjun thought he might have pushed too far, but Mark only asked, “What is it?”

Renjun held up the globe in his hand. Mark’s jaw set.

“You want me to do your assignment?”

“No,” Renjun said.

“Then you want me to do part of it.”

“No, it’s not that. I want you to teach me how you would do this, because I have no idea how it’s supposed to work. I can’t even make the plants grow right.” Renjun waited for Mark to be surprised that he couldn’t do something so basic. He’d seen that reaction enough times to be ready for it.

Mark’s expression didn’t change. His mouth was still set in a straight line. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath in, and let it out.

“You tried to blackmail me to teach you? Couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, asked? Yeah I don’t do free favors, but you could’ve bought me lunch or something.”

Renjun felt foolish and a little guilty now that Mark put it like that.

“I thought you were better than that,” Mark said.

Renjun wanted to protest. He hadn’t meant for it to be blackmail. It was supposed to be more along the lines of heavy-handed persuasion. But maybe that amounted to the same thing.

Eventually, Renjun said, “I should’ve been. I’m sorry.” But he wasn’t sorry enough to walk himself out though, so maybe he wasn’t better than that. “If I buy you two lunches, and promise not to tell anyone, will you help me?”

Mark took another breath, and blew it out. “Three lunches. And I’m only helping guide you, got it? I’m not doing any of it.”

Renjun agreed, and they moved to another part of the room several paces further from the books. Renjun uncapped the globe, and Mark watched as Renjun showed him how he’d been making the vines grow, a few centimeters at a time.

Mark examined the vines and frowned. “What parts are the hardest for you?” he asked.

“I can’t form the connection they said you’re supposed to.”

“As in you can’t, or it breaks easily?”

“I don’t think there’s a connection at all. I feel like I’m just throwing magic at it.”

“You need to have a steady flow of magic from your core through your fingers to the vines,” Mark said.

“I don’t even have a flow from my core to my fingers.”

“You don’t?”

“I try to take a drop of magic from my core, and by the time it reaches my fingers most of it is gone. I don’t know how to make that into a flow,” Renjun admitted. It was hard for him to say it aloud. He didn’t want Mark to know he struggled with the basic of the basics, but he couldn’t see how to avoid telling him.

But instead of looking at him with pity, Mark looked thoughtful. “Actually, something that helped me in the past was not thinking of interacting with my magic as taking a drop. Everyone’s magic is a little different, so why shouldn’t we interact with it differently? I’ve been trying to convince the professors of this for years, but they say it’s not worth spending more time on when the drop method works fine for most.” Mark’s eyes lit up. “But if there’s two of us, we might be able to change their minds. Would you be down to try this?”

“I suppose. I’d try anything at this point. What do you mean, interacting with it differently?”

Mark rubbed his hands together, suddenly more invested than Renjun expected him to be about wasting his time on a school assignment. “It’ll probably be different for you. You have to think about how your magic responds to stimuli, and what it responds best to. For me, instead of thinking of taking a drop, I think of strings of magic coming out of my core, and when I work with them it’s like weaving together a picture.”

Mark gave him a brief demonstration by using his magic to fetch a book from one of the top shelves. It was hard to discern, but if Renjun stretched his senses, he thought he could feel a kind of interlacing in Mark’s magic as it was drawn out of him.

Renjun tried to copy him, and think of his magic as threads. His magic liked that even less. The threads frayed as his tried to draw them out. He tried to combine different threads together to keep them from fraying, but instead of wrapping around each other, when they touched they split into smaller threads that each began to fray. He and Mark brainstormed some other ideas, and he began to work them.

At some point while he was trying them, Mark moved back to his desk and started working on something, though he kept an eye on Renjun.

Renjun tried to think of his magic as vines, growing out from his core to his fingertips. His magic could deal with that, though he could tell somehow that it still didn’t like it. It produced thin tendrils that curled up lazily to his fingers, moving only when pushed by his will and stopping whenever he lost a fraction of concentration. With these he was at last able to form a feeble connection to the vines.

He urged them to grow, and grow they did, but slow and reluctant. After they’d grown maybe a quarter of a meter, Renjun’s vision blurred, and his concentration snapped. He hadn’t realized that sweat was dripping down his face. Though he didn’t feel like he’d used much magic, he swayed where he stood. He gathered himself for another attempt.

“That’s enough,” Mark said. “You’re going to overexert yourself if you keep going.”

Renjun was shocked that almost two hours had passed since he started. His head hurt.

“Let’s continue tomorrow, if you’re free then. I’ll be here 5-7. Think about the way your magic feels and what it might respond to.”

Mark came with Renjun to the side door.

As he let Renjun out, he said, “Next time you need something from me, ask. Don’t pull this shit again.”

Renjun trudged back to his apartment, his vines now spilling over his hands. He still didn’t know how to shape them, but he was too tired to think about it. He was too tired to be angry at the voices coming down the hall when he pushed open the door, too tired to feel much of anything.

He even greeted Jaemin first, which shocked both Donghyuck and Jaemin into silence. It allowed him to make his escape to his room before Donghyuck could say anything else, and then the true escape of sleep pulled him under to a place his thoughts could not follow.

* * *

Renjun woke up in the dark, gasping for breath. In his dreams something had been chasing him, or was it choking him? He couldn’t remember.

He remembered running and the sensation of wind, and falling, falling. Down, down, down.

He pushed himself up, and found his body was shaking. It’d been a long, long time since he’d had a dream like that, so long ago that he must have been a child.

When he was a child he remembered his dreams. It’d be better if he could remember them now, so at least he’d know why he was struggling to breathe, and could convince himself it wasn’t real.

He reached for the glass of water by his bedside, but his fingers met air. He groped around his nightstand for a while before he remembered that because he’d been so tired he hadn’t gotten a glass of water.

He checked his phone. 1:22 am.

He didn’t think he could fall asleep again for some time, so he pushed himself out of the bed to go get the water. His throat felt scratchy.

He stumbled his way toward the living room, and didn’t notice the sliver of light under the door between the hall and the living room. He pushed the door open to see that the lamp by the couch was on. Jaemin turned and saw him.

“You’re still here,” Renjun said dumbly. He felt like he was still in a dream.

“You’re up,” Jaemin said.

“Why are you still here?”

“Donghyuck said I could stay until my class later.”

“Oh, okay.” In the dream-like state of the night, it didn’t feel so strange that Jaemin was there. Renjun shuffled past him and into the kitchen. He filled a glass with water.

When he came back to the living room, Jaemin looked as if he’d been waiting for him.

“Are you and Donghyuck fighting because of me?” Jaemin asked.

Renjun drank some water from the glass. It soothed his throat. “Yes,” he said, which wasn’t the entire truth, but wasn’t a lie either. He was too tired to think of something nicer to say. He waited for Jaemin to look down about it. Now that Jaemin knew maybe he’d have the good grace to take himself out of the situation. Renjun hoped he wouldn’t apologize because then Renjun would have to reassure him that he hadn’t done anything to apologize for, which could lead to questions why he was causing their fight, questions Renjun couldn’t exactly answer. That would make it more awkward between them.

Instead, Jaemin asked, “Why do you dislike me?”

Renjun faltered. He hadn’t been expecting that. “I don’t dislike you.”

Jaemin tilted his head. “The strange thing is you’re not lying, but you tense up every time I’m around.”

Renjun had forgotten Jaemin could tell if he was lying. He swallowed another gulp of water.

“Jeno said you can feel auras.” Renjun’s fingers twitched against the glass. “I’ve never heard of a witch that can do that. Does it bother you? Is that why?”

“I’m not used to it,” Renjun said. That wasn’t a lie. “So auras I’m not familiar with do bother me.”

“Don’t you want to change that?”

“I don’t know. I need to—I need to go back to sleep.”

Jaemin nodded. His eyes glowed in the lamplight. “Of course. Sorry for keeping you up.”

Renjun made his way back to his bed, the glass of water half-empty by the time he set it on his nightstand. It took him a long time to fall back asleep.

* * *

Renjun met Mark in the Human Studies Library exactly at 5.

“You’ve thought about it?” Mark asked.

He had.

Renjun had thought about how his magic pulsed, in and out, the dark lines moving over the surface. The dark lines flickered and crackled as they moved, and he’d come up with a list of ideas based on that distorted movement, like trying to draw his magic out as flames, or lightning.

It’d seemed like a promising start, but as he went down the list, each idea felt wrong. Some worked better than others, but they all felt like he was pushing against what his magic wanted. He fought for each scrap of growth, no matter what form he tried to force his magic into.

An hour later, he threw up his hands. “I don’t think it’s going to work.”

“Maybe you should take a break,” Mark said.

Renjun closed his eyes and laid back on the floor.

Mark looked over his desk at Renjun and made a disgusted noise. “You know they haven’t cleaned the ground for weeks, right?”

“I don’t care.”

Renjun was near the bottom of his list, and he was pretty sure ‘throw magic like fireballs’, and ‘TV white noise static, is this even an idea’ weren’t going to work.

He closed his eyes, navigated himself to his core, and watched it pulse. Ignoring his exhaustion and growing resentment, it pulsed in a steady, unchanging beat. It was like a drum, beat by a drummer that didn’t care for Renjun’s state of mind. The only tune it followed was his heartbeat. It was like a heartbeat itself.

Like a heart.

An idea rose unbidden in his mind.

He sat up again.

“That was fast,” Mark said. “You thought of something?”

“Yeah, something,” Renjun said.

“Okay, right, not going to tell me. Just trying to help over here,” Mark said.

Renjun felt for his core again. It beat there, in time with his heart.

He steeled himself. He wasn’t sure if it would hurt, so he tried not to hesitate.

He made the incision. It was almost too easy. All he needed to do with think of making a small cut on the surface of his core, and it was done almost before the thought was complete.

It didn’t hurt much. A sting, and then the magic welled up at the cut like blood, pooling out drop by drop and flowing along the paths of his veins to his hand.

He wasn’t sure if it was following his real veins or what he imagined his veins looked like. It dripped down from his hand, and when it hit the ground, it began to move in slow streams across the ground to the vines. After a few seconds, or maybe minutes, the streams reached the base of the globe. The vines quivered as the magic hit them. Renjun almost caught his breath, but he remembered to keep himself and his breath steady. He urged more magic to come out, but he didn’t need to. More pooled out from the cut on its own.

The vines began to grow. Roots lengthened in the water. The stalks extended and curled upward. At first the vines grew slowly, then faster as magic continued to flow in. Leaves unfurled.

Renjun hadn’t thought to try to shape the vines, but his magic seemed to be directing them into some kind of formation, and he let it.

Stalks thickened, curled around each other, and ballooned outward. There was a rustling of leaves as the vines brushed against each other.

The last of the flow of magic left Renjun’s hand. The vines curled together at the top before their movement came to an abrupt halt. The magic had run out.

“You did it!” Mark said.

“Yeah,” Renjun said. His mouth felt suddenly dry. He swallowed, and his saliva felt thick in his mouth.

“What’s it supposed to be? Just a sphere?”

“Yeah. Just a sphere,” Renjun echoed.

“Still, great job. You know, I can’t say I was really 100% rooting for you at the start, but after seeing you try so hard on this, I’m glad that to see it work out.”

“Thanks, Mark. Couldn’t have done it without you,” Renjun said, a rote response. He was grateful, but his surroundings felt distant. His attention was drawn to the vines, meshed together in a distinct lattice like vertical bars crossed here and there by horizontal ones. It was slightly too oblong to be a true sphere.

There were no thorns on the vines, but he recognized it anyway.

It was the cage of thorns he’d seen in the vampire in the forest.

“Renjun.” Mark’s voice threw Renjun’s focus back out. “You’re bleeding.”

Renjun looked down at his hand. There was a cut across the center of his palm. It was shallow. He hadn’t felt it earlier, but now that he noticed it, it began to sting. A line of red was beaded across its surface.

* * *

Renjun didn’t see Donghyuck in the living room when he got home, though his shoes were at the entrance. That was unusual. Donghyuck usually staked his claim on the couch in the living room. Maybe he was tired too.

The door to Renjun’s room was ajar, and the lights were still on. He grimaced internally. He must have been more out of it than he thought in the morning.

He stepped into his room, and saw Donghyuck sitting in his chair.

“I was waiting for you,” Donghyuck said, before Renjun had a chance to demand why he was there or try to kick him out. Donghyuck sat with his body bent forward, his elbows resting on his legs. He was looking at his hands, and he traced the line of his palm with one finger.

His finger went traced the line up, then down, then back up.

“I wanted to,” Donghyuck said, and stopped. He continued to trace the line on his palm. The hesitation wasn’t like Donghyuck, who didn’t have trouble finding words. “I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Donghyuck paused again. “For making it seem like you need my help.”

Renjun could see it was hard for him to say. Renjun hesitated then too, but plunged on. “It is what you really think though, isn’t it?”

“It’s not what I think. I was mad, ok? It’s not like I think you need my help to function. I just wanted to help and I was mad you couldn’t get where I was coming from, and I said some things that, I guess, I shouldn’t have.”

“But maybe you were right. I rely on you too much.”

Donghyuck’s finger stopped midway through going down his palm again. “It’s okay to ask for help, Renjun.”

A laugh escaped from Renjun. He couldn’t help it. “That’s easy for you to say. I know it’s okay to ask for help, but to feel like you need it, to feel like your friends think you need it? I don’t know if you know how suffocating that is.”

“Maybe I don’t, but it’s not like I’ve never asked for help before.”

Renjun wanted to say it wasn’t the same. He was Donghyuck, the star witch, the prodigy. He was Donghyuck, who always had a good comeback, who faced challenges with steely determination and a wit to match. It couldn’t be the same. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

Donghyuck looked up at him then. “No, that’s not the point. The point is, I miss talking and hanging out and our stupid jokes. I miss you. I miss us.”

Donghyuck looked wistful and a bit sad. “I won’t bring Jaemin around here anymore if you don’t like it. I still think you’d like him if you got to know him better, but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to see him.”

Renjun was very tempted to agree to that. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but something held him back.

_Don’t you want to change that?_

He hadn’t known the answer then, and he didn’t know the answer now. All he knew was that fourth year would bring changes whether he wanted it to or not.

Change was hard. It was awkward. It could be painful. It was a step into the unknown when he couldn’t know if he’d make it to the other side, or if he’d like what he found on there.

_You’re a coward, Renjun Huang._

Renjun sat down on his bed. He wanted to take a shower and lie in his bed and leave his problems for later the way he’d been doing. He faced Donghyuck. “You were right that I’ve avoided thinking about mixed classes. I was mad that you’d try to do something about it, and I still don’t think you should have, but you’re right that I can’t avoid it forever. And I don’t want you to have to avoid bringing your friends to our place because of me.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying? I won’t let you take it back,” Donghyuck cautioned.

“What I’m saying is I’m okay with you bringing Jaemin around. Just let me know beforehand. I’m not going to try to be friends with him, but I’ll try to be normal.”

Donghyuck waited, and Renjun knew he had one other decision to make. It wasn’t the choice he wanted to make, and Renjun wished that Donghyuck had become friends with a less powerful vampire, but if he could get used to Jaemin, maybe he could handle the other vampires too.

“I’ll try to talk to him,” Renjun said.

A slow smile spread across Donghyuck’s face.

They sat in silence for a while. Renjun felt lighter than he had for days.

“I missed you too, Donghyuck,” Renjun said.

“Of course you did. I’m very missable,” Donghyuck said.

Before Renjun could take it back, Donghyuck noticed the glass globe in Renjun’s hands for the first time, and the vines in their latticed spheroid.

His eyes widened. “You finished it?”

Renjun glared at him. “Can you try to sound less surprised?”

Donghyuck held up his hands. “Hey, it was a hard assignment.”

“To be honest, I got help from Mark.”

It was almost funny how fast any humor dropped from Donghyuck’s face. “Please tell me I heard that wrong. You went to _Mark_?”

* * *

Donghyuck spent a day bemoaning that Renjun was a traitor. Renjun didn’t mind. It felt good talking to each other again, even if half of the talking was Dongyuck’s declarations that friendship meant nothing in this cold, cruel world.

Donghyuck had been rivals with Mark since Mark bested him in one of the magic demonstrations last year. At least Donghyuck called them rivals. Renjun didn’t think Mark knew about the rivalry.

* * *

Renjun had said he would try talk to Jaemin. He hadn’t said he would try right away. He might have avoided him for a while longer. Not on purpose. It wasn’t his fault if he happened to get home early and go to bed before Donghyuck came home, or if he needed to stay over at Chenle’s because they’d both decided a Human Studies project couldn’t be that hard and therefore ended up subsisting on instant ramen, very little sleep, and regret for a couple days before the due date.

Eventually he ran out of reasons not to be awake and at home at the times when Donghyuck brought Jaemin over, and some time after that, he forced himself to begin sitting in the living room with them.

He listened more than he talked. Jaemin knew about him and auras, so he knew too much. Sometimes Renjun couldn’t help getting drawn into the conversation, but for a while, he stayed on guard.

It became hard to keep his guard up though, not solely because Jaemin was friendly and talkative, and made an effort to include him. As Renjun quickly discovered, Jaemin could be as exasperating as Donghyuck. For one thing he smiled too much, and had this weird habit of staring at a person’s lips while they talked. He was a vampire; if he was going to stare shouldn’t he at least stare at the neck? And despite the way he stared, with the intensity of what seemed like his full attention, he wasn’t always actually paying attention. On top of that he was insistent, sometimes nosy, and though he was subtle about it, stubborn. Renjun should have known. Maybe all of Donghyuck’s friends were stubborn.

After Renjun spent a long and pointless evening arguing about whether coffee was better than tea, he decided talking to Jaemin had been a mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> took a longer time this time, but we're back!
> 
> jaemin has managed to worm his way into their lives, doyoung's awake and cognizant, and their third year is drawing to a close


	8. bloom, he said

Renjun had endured almost a year of Magic with Park, and he would do it again just to see this.

Renjun and Donghyuck had taken their usual seats at the back, and placed down their glass globes next to each other. Renjun had spent the past few days trying to convince himself that it wasn’t actually the cage of thorns, but a nice harmless sphere-like structure that just so happened to look like the cage of thorns because it was also a sphere-like if not-so-nice structure. He hadn’t succeeded. It wasn’t for lack of trying. He’d examined his sculpture, and told himself that the cage of thorns hadn’t been that spherical, the lines had been placed further apart. It was true that some of the details were wrong. He could tell there were differences even though he didn’t remember the details of the cage. He traced one of the vines from top to bottom with his eyes.

_It’s missing a line here_ , he thought.

He glanced at another section to the right.

If there’d been another line there it would have been stronger. It wouldn’t have broken so easily when Renjun touched it then.

Renjun stopped looking at the cage, feeling uncomfortable. He didn’t know where those thoughts had come from.

He also still couldn’t explain how he knew it was the cage. He only knew that the moment he’d set eyes on it, he known what it was supposed to be.

Park entered the room right on time. His polka dotted shirt was a pastel yellow with pink and white dots of different sizes, and his hair had been swept to one side, more styled than it usually was. Maybe it was extra effort for this last lesson. Renjun was disappointed to see that it worked on some of the class. There were at least a few dreamy stares, and Renjun squinted extra hard to see if he could see even a hint of what they were seeing. Nope. He personally thought the shirt looked tackier than Donghyuck’s eccentric aunt’s collection of patterned vacation tees.

“Welcome to your last lesson of the year. I’m glad to see you’ve all made it. Let’s start by seeing what you’ve done for the last assignment.”

His gaze swept the room, past vine sculptures large and small. His eyes locked with Renjun’s, and when he saw Renjun’s simple but complete assignment, he blinked rapidly. A total of three times, as if he didn’t believe what he was seeing. Renjun felt a surge of triumph, cage or no. Park’s eyebrow twitched, and he cleared his throat.

But then, Donghyuck moved his globe to the right, so that it was no longer obscured by the towering column of vines in front of it. Renjun was unsure what that sculpture was supposed to be, aside from a very tall column. It was a nice column.

After Donghyuck’s sculpture came into view, Park stared at his butt naked self, speechless, for a total of at least five seconds. They were five beautiful seconds. Renjun would have paid to have them recorded.

Park’s face reddened, and his eyes grew larger and larger until they almost bulged from his face. At the same time, the students’ heads turned, several at a time, a ripple of movement that spread out to the sides of the room. Renjun saw a girl double over in silent laughter, while her friend, horrified, shoved her in the side. Park’s mouth worked soundlessly for another second, until he found his voice.

“Donghyuck Lee, I’m putting you in detention,” Park said. Detention was another concept Renjun suspected they’d borrowed from human schools.

Donghyuck covered his mouth in an expression of mock horror. “Professor, what are you punishing me for?”

“This is highly disrespectful, and I will not stand for it.”

“On the contrary, Professor, I meant to show my great admiration with this piece,” Donghyuck said, patting the leafy bum with one hand. “It is an artistic interpretation of someone I greatly respect, and I wanted to show that despite his elevated status, he participates in the same activities all men do. It’s symbolic, don’t you think?”

“It is profane,” Park said. The red on his face had become mottled with patches of deeper magenta.

Donghyuck looked troubled. “If you think this is profane, you really wouldn’t have liked my original idea.”

Park pointed at the door. “Take that out, now.”

“How am I supposed to get a grade for this then? It took a lot of work—”

“ _Now_ Donghyuck,” Park almost shouted.

Donghyuck heaved a great sigh. “Okay, okay. Seems like no one appreciates art these days.”

Donghyuck took his time gathering up his sculpture. After he’d adjusted his grip a couple more times than necessary, he began to walk down the steps with a slow, lazy stride. With each step, the leafy dick flapped up and down against the thigh. By the time he reached the door, all eyes were on him if they hadn’t been before.

Before making his exit, Donghyuck turned once more, inadvertently giving everyone a full frontal view of Park pissing. He waved.

* * *

For all his smiling and talking, Renjun learned that Jaemin wasn’t as high energy as he’d seemed. There were times when he was full of energy, almost hyper, but the number of times he was like that diminished the more he visited. If Renjun didn’t know that vampires’ metabolisms broke down most drugs before they’d take effect, he would have suspected the coffee. Jaemin’s fondness of the drink seemed more like an addiction. Since he was a vampire, Renjun supposed it didn’t matter that he was chugging down however many cups of that he went through a day. Still.

The hyperness seemed almost like a front, especially after it started to wane over time, but at the same time it didn’t feel unnatural. Renjun understood wanting to make a good impression, if that was what Jaemin was going for with his hyperness, and nerves, though Jaemin never seemed nervous, and the feeling of not knowing where you stood yet within a group, so he chalked it up to that.

There were other times when Jaemin was quiet. Times when he listened with a watchful eye, and didn’t say much. That was a side of Jaemin Renjun wasn’t used to. Though he felt wary of it, it also felt more real. These were the times like that night with Jaemin in the lamplight, when Renjun wasn’t sure what he was thinking when he did speak.

Renjun maintained that despite the inconstancy, one thing stayed the same – Jaemin was insufferable.

Renjun didn’t think about that as he bent his head over the textbook. The lines had begun to blur together, but he still didn’t remember what year which witch did some crime which resulted in some law or ordinance he also didn’t remember the year of. As he read, his hand hovered idly over a notebook. He’d been trying to take notes, but it hadn’t taken long for those to become useless squiggles. Not long after that, he’d given up on the effort altogether. Getting through the content would be a heroic effort enough. And here he’d thought the history of magic would be way less dry than human history. Perhaps he should be impressed they’d shown him how wrong he was.

As he worked, he felt a sudden pressure descend, probing at him.

He looked up.

“Jaemin?” he said.

“So you really can feel auras,” Jaemin said. The pressure didn’t dissipate. It was just the two of them in the apartment. Donghyuck would be back later. Jaemin had come by to drop off some of Donghyuck’s stuff since they’d shared club activities that day. Renjun didn’t know why Donghyuck had brought a bag of onions and a pumpkin to his music club, but he didn’t question it. Donghyuck did too much to question.

Renjun hadn’t planned to let Jaemin come in after, but he hadn’t had the heart to send him away, especially after he pulled a sad puppy face when Renjun stood too long at the doorway looking at him without inviting him inside. If he were honest, he had been a little lonely at home by himself. It occurred to him later that he hadn’t thought about the fact that Jaemin was a vampire. That made him uncomfortable. The thought should’ve at least crossed his mind.

Renjun narrowed his eyes. “You already knew that.”

Jaemin’s aura nudged him again, very lightly.

“Stop that,” Renjun said.

“Oh, you’re pretty sensitive to it too. I know some vampires who would’ve missed that.”

It was strange to know that he felt auras more strongly than some vampires. Renjun stored away the information in case it’d be useful in future.

There were more immediate matters at hand. Like passing his test. Renjun put down his pencil. “Can you tell how many shits I give?”

Jaemin looked to be giving the question some serious thought.

“None, Jaemin. Zero. So stop bothering me. Just because I can feel auras doesn’t mean you get to prod me with yours, got it?”

Jaemin looked a little guilty, and the pressure withdrew, leaving his usual amount of presence. Jaemin usually let his aura hang around him in cloud that spanned the space of several people. Renjun had asked him why he did that once, and he’d said that was his aura’s natural state when he wasn’t doing anything with it. It took energy to diminish or expand from that. Jaemin’s aura was light when he wasn’t using it, and walking into it felt somewhat like walking into a spray of mist. Renjun hadn’t gotten used to it, which he’d expected. What he hadn’t expected was to almost like the feeling of it on his skin. He tried not to think about that.

Renjun returned to his textbook. _The Flying Pudding Riots of 1807_ , read the title of the next chapter. A deceiving title, like many of the other chapters’. The unsuspecting student might think that such a title would lead to exciting content at last. But Renjun was a seasoned veteran. He knew that title was a trap, an entrance into yet another saga of how many ways can I bore Renjun to death? He sank back in his chair. Gods, he hadn’t even reached the chapters on the 20th century yet.

As he sank in his chair, he felt the pressure on him again, moving around his shoulders. It stunk of encouragement.

He opened one baleful eye. “Jaemin,” he said. It was a warning.

“Trying to be helpful,” Jaemin said, his face drawing into the precursor to sad puppy face.

“Then don’t,” Renjun said, and Jaemin’s face pulled into full-on sad puppy. Renjun looked at the ceiling. He wasn’t falling for that one again. “And what are you doing anyway. Are you…are you trying to give me a massage?”

“Maybe?”

Renjun cringed at the idea of Jaemin’s aura moving like fingers on his shoulders. “Just don’t. Don’t prod me, don’t touch me. I don’t need it.”

“Technically I’m not touching you,” Jaemin said, holding up his hands.

Renjun picked up his pencil again. “Okay, let me rephrase that. Do something to me with your aura again, and I will skewer your eyeball with this pencil.”

Jaemin huffed. “But aren’t you curious about it? Don’t you want to know how well you can respond to auras?”

Jaemin asked it as if it were the easiest thing in the world. It was a dangerous line of questioning. “I can be curious after I pass my History of Magic final, if I don’t die from boredom first,” Renjun said.

Jaemin’s eyes snapped to his face, more serious than Renjun expected. “Okay,” Jaemin said. Renjun felt uneasy at his change in mood, but it wasn’t like their conversation was serious. Even if it was, there was plenty of time of forget about it before finals were over.

Renjun got back to his textbook. The chapter was denser than the one before it. He didn’t even remember learning whatever the chapter was about.

Less than 10 minutes later, Jaemin’s voice interrupted him again. “I’m bored,” he whined.

Renjun gripped his pencil and raised it with menace. “If I survive this studying session, I am going to strangle you,” he said.

“Feisty. But I like it.”

Renjun changed his mind. He was going to strangle Jaemin now.

* * *

Jeno gaped as Jaemin raised a two-finger salute to the witch passing by them. Jaemin was friendly, yes, but he didn’t usually wave to people he wasn’t friends with. He had enough friends as it was, and there were sycophants that he had to avoid giving attention to. Even outside of that, he had to be choosy. Jeno understood that. Their attention could be taken the wrong way, and as heirs to important families, they had to be at least a little selective about who they gave their attention to.

Jeno didn’t know why Renjun looked so familiar when Jeno hadn’t seen him in weeks. Jeno could tell that his hair had gotten longer. His bangs drifted down near his eyes. He looked small. The gray hoodie he wore swallowed him up.

Renjun looked down at the road, as if he hadn’t seen Jaemin’s hand gesture.

“Hey Renjun,” Jaemin said, giving him no choice but to look up as he passed.

“Hey,” Renjun said. He sounded less than enthusiastic, but Jeno could tell his demeanor had changed. He didn’t have that wariness he’d always seemed to have. Instead there was a kind of weary resignment. Renjun’s eyes flicked to the right and met Jeno’s by accident. Some of that wariness seemed to come back. He shoved his hands in his pockets, and his eyes flicked away. The way he looked at Jaemin had a certain kind of familiarity, but Jeno didn’t know how that was possible. He certainly didn’t look at Jeno that way. In fact, he wasn’t trying to look at Jeno at all. Jeno wouldn’t say that bothered him. Not at all.

“How’d your test go?” Jaemin asked.

“It was fine,” Renjun said. Then, sounding annoyed, “No thanks to you.”

Jaemin looked startled. “What did I do?”

There was a decent amount of foot traffic along the pathway, and a few curious onlookers glanced over at them. Jeno saw that Renjun noticed them. One of the onlookers seemed to stare a long time at Renjun.

Looking more wary now, Renjun said, “Don’t worry about it. Look, I got to go.”

As soon as he left, Jeno turned to Jaemin.

“Since when were you so familiar with him?” he asked.

“With Renjun? Since a week or two ago. We’re friends now.”

“Doesn’t look like he thinks you’re friends,” Jeno said, feeling spiteful for some reason.

“He’s just shy,” Jaemin said.

“So, why him?”

It was an innocuous question, but Jaemin looked at him sharply. Jaemin knew what he meant, and he didn’t like it. It wasn’t uncommon for friendships with witches to be treated like tools, a selection to pick the ones that could be used for the best advantage. Though Jaemin knew it was true – with fourth year coming up, a lot of witches and vampires had started to think about making the right connections. It wasn’t like he and Jaemin didn’t think about it either. The pairings were too important to mess up.

“I looked him up. He’s pretty much at the bottom of the class. So, why?”

Jaemin shook his head. “There’s no why. I didn’t choose him, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t want to think like that yet. I know we’re going to have to, but it’s so political. I just wanted some new friends.”

“Is that all he wants though?” Jeno watched Jaemin closely. Before he thought the better of it, he added, “Has he asked you to bite him?”

Jaemin looked at him again, more sharply. “No, he hasn’t. It’s not like that either. I know you don’t have witch friends, but it’s never been weird to you before that I do. Why are you so interested in him, anyway?”

“I’m not interested in him,” Jeno spluttered. “I’m just curious why you got friendly with him all of a sudden, especially since you know he feels auras.”

“If you must know, I became friends with Donghyuck. Turns out they’re roommates, so it just happened.” Jaemin’s gaze grew more thoughtful. “It is interesting how he feels auras though.”

Jeno felt something twist in his gut. Somehow he hadn’t thought that Jaemin would bring that up with Renjun. It’d been something they were supposed to discuss among themselves, not with Renjun. “You and him talked about that?”

“Yeah. I’ve never seen that before. He’s pretty sensitive to it too.”

“Is he?” Jeno said. He felt a strange sense of defeat, though he hadn’t had anything to lose.

* * *

Chenle stared at Jaemin.

“What’s he doing here?” he whispered to Renjun. Renjun felt a strange sense of déjà vu, though he wasn’t the one asking this time. He was pretty sure Jaemin could hear them, but Jaemin kept his eyes trained on his phone.

“I forgot to tell you, but he’s kind of friends with Donghyuck now.”

“Oh,” Chenle said. He made a resigned noise. “Of course.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Donghyuck, who made no pretense of not being able to hear them.

“That you have great taste in friends, I’m sure,” Jaemin said, throwing an arm around Donghyuck’s shoulders.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Chenle said, with a sweet smile. “Though I didn’t know your new friend was joining us.”

Renjun hadn’t known either.

Jaemin pulled a face. “Don’t talk like we’re not friends, Chenle.”

Chenle’s expression darkened, but only for the briefest moment. “If you say so,” he said. “Still.” Chenle shot a pointed look at Donghyuck, who shrugged.

“He already knows what the professors said, so I thought we could use the helping hand,” Donghyuck said.

Renjun turned to Donghyuck, feeling a familiar sense of trepidation. Donghyuck sounded like he had an idea. “Helping hand for what? I thought we were just talking.”

“I’m planning for the future, Renjun. If we need a helping hand.” Renjun did not like that thoughtful look on his face.

They sat together around the coffee table. Donghyuck started by recounting with dramatic flourish what they’d heard from the professors’ meeting, making sure to describe the magic he’d done to keep them from being noticed, and making sure that they knew it was his brilliant plan.

“Stupid plan, you mean,” Chenle muttered.

Donghyuck glared at him but otherwise managed to ignore him.

“So what do we know about demons? There was a war, they were defeated, and they were Sealed away in the demonic realm, never to be seen again. Now suddenly, half a century later, they’re back.”

“They might be back,” Renjun said. “They’re not sure.”

“They were sure enough to warn the Council of Night,” Chenle said. “That doesn’t mean they’re back, but—”

“It means they very likely could be. Good point, Chenle,” Donghyuck said.

“ _My_ point was that it means something dangerous is out there, whether it’s demons or something else.”

“Okay, let’s assume there’s a high probability it’s demons. They said they needed to prepare for it, but so far we’ve heard nothing about it. They haven’t even announced the disappearances; those people are all still on those ‘long-term missions’. They probably have more information now, but they won’t share any of it with us.”

“It’s not like they have to share it with us,” Renjun said.

“They should,” Donghyuck said. “They might be ‘prepared’, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to prepare us at all. Did the training squadron pairs sent on those missions even know what could have been out there? It’s not like demons are going to say, ‘Oh you didn’t know about us? We’ll leave you alone then.’” Donghyuck pulled out a notebook from his backpack and flipped to the middle. He’d written down a list of names, two on each line. Three of the lines were crossed out. One had a line through one of the names and a circle around the other. The names on that line were Doyoung and Jaehyun. “I started tracking the training squadron pairs, from the rosters they post up each week. I don’t know what preparations they’re doing, but another pair has been sent on a ‘long-term mission’ since a few days ago. I think it’s time we started to prepare ourselves.”

Renjun stared at the lines crossed through the names. He felt a chill. He didn’t like how final it looked.

Jaemin had been quiet, but he spoke up. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. That’s how Donghyuck and I started talking. We ran into each other when we were looking at the roster.”

“So it wasn’t because of the music club,” Renjun said, turning toward Donghyuck. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You weren’t really in a mood to talk.”

“And after that?”

“I got distracted! I mean, I really did get him to join the club, and we’re preparing a musical number unlike any you’ve heard before. You want to hear a snippet?”

“No thanks,” Renjun said.

Donghyuck shrugged. “Your loss.”

Renjun doubted that. Donghyuck’s music club was good, but Donghyuck was probably the best singer among them, and Renjun had heard enough of that coming from the shower. He was a little curious to hear Jaemin rap, but he had a feeling that if he encouraged that now, he’d regret it later.

Jaemin continued, “We started talking about it, and realized there’s not much we know about demons. Haven’t you ever found it weird how the textbooks don’t have a whole chapter on the Demon War? Or on demons? It’s always a couple paragraphs saying how demons are evil, how they come from the demon realm, and how they live to kill and possess people with demoncraft. There’s no detail on how demoncraft works or what it is, except that it’s dangerous because vampiric powers don’t work as well against it. Which means we can’t heal as fast if we get hit by it. Donghyuck said the witch textbooks are pretty much the same.”

It was true. Renjun tried to remember what it’d said. Something about not all magic working against demons.

“And there’s even less detail about the war. Since it was the last big war, and so recent, you’d think there’d be lots of detail on it. Eye witness accounts, even. But all they say is that the war was short but had a heavy death toll, and that it was ended by the Sealing. It doesn’t say how they did the Sealing, or what battles were fought, or how the demons came here from the demonic realm in the first place.

My parents have never talked to me about it, and when I checked with Jisung and Jeno, their parents haven’t either. It was like they hid it from us on purpose. Or they can’t talk about it.”

“My mom said she killed a demon in the war, but other than that, nothing,” Donghyuck said.

“How about you two?” Jaemin asked Chenle and Renjun.

Renjun shook his head. He’d never thought much about the Demon War, or any of the other wars in their history textbooks. To him, it was little more than lines printed on a page, more so because he’d been learning a different history up until three years ago. His mother hadn’t talked about any magical history, let alone specific wars, and to him none of it quite felt real.

“My parents said they would tell me when I was older,” Chenle said. “Maybe you find out when you join a training squadron.”

“Maybe, but we’re years out from that. And whatever the training squadrons know, it clearly isn’t enough to protect them,” Donghyuck said, his fingers tapping the page in front of him. He looked at Jaemin. It was obvious they’d talked about this before. Renjun couldn’t help feeling that he should’ve been the one Donghyuck talked to first. They’d found out the information together, but they hadn’t talked about it much, and it had been unusual for Donghyuck not to want to talk about it. Now Renjun knew that he had been talking about it, just with someone else.

“Do you think the Seal is broken?” Renjun asked. All three of them turned to him, aghast. “Did I say something wrong?”

“If the Seal was broken, that would be very, very bad. Like demons everywhere killing people kind of bad,” Donghyuck said.

“Damaged, then.”

“That’s…probably possible?” Donghyuck said. He looked disturbed at the thought. “The problem is none of us know enough about the Seal to know if or how it could be damaged. We need more info about demons, about the Seal, and about what the professors aren’t telling us.” He started to get that maniacal gleam in his eye Renjun was all too familiar with.

Chenle seemed to recognize it too. “Before you say whatever stupid plan you’ve thought of, I have a better idea.”

“Do you? Because I don’t think it’s going to beat breaking into—”

“Let’s go to the library.”

Donghyuck tapped his notebook again, thinking, then sighed. “Boring as always, Chenle. But I guess we can start there.”

Renjun didn’t voice the other thought he’d had. Maybe the Seal had never been perfect. Maybe there had always been demons left behind, lurking among them.

* * *

Renjun closed his eyes.

Now that he knew how to do it, it was easy. He’d learned he didn’t need to cut into his magic, not unless he wanted more of it.

A prick was enough.

He felt the warmth of his magic moving through his veins. It was a heady rush. It mingled with a warmth that emerged somewhere on his hand. He knew now that the warmth was blood. It was coming from his left hand this time. He thought it might on his index finger, near the tip.

He’d found he could direct the flow of magic to one hand or the other, which was convienent because his right hand was getting cut up. He could also send it to both, but then he’d get cuts on both hands for the same amount of magic. He didn’t see how that was any use. He remembered vaguely that someone had said using both hands was better for some kinds of magic. He’d have to look into that later.

He’d never been able to use so much magic before, in almost the way it should be used. It didn’t exhaust him, and it was like what they described in the classes, like what Dongyuck said it should feel like each time he’d tried to help Renjun understand what he was doing wrong.

More than that, it felt right.

The magic, thrumming in his veins. The way it came at his call. Even the blood that welled up at his skin. What were a few cuts for that?

He owed Mark a couple very nice meals.

It wasn’t perfect, but he wouldn’t ask for perfect. Since he’d found out he was a witch, he’d never really felt like one. Now he thought maybe he could. Maybe not yet – it still felt like a skin he wore on that hadn’t been made to fit him, but maybe that could change.

His magic wasn’t docile. He knew how to call it up now, but he didn’t have much control over it. It’d do what he wanted, to a point, but it had a mind of its own. He was riding the beast, but he couldn’t change its direction.

Renjun opened his eyes.

The flame he’d summoned over his palm didn’t emit any light. It burned black, darker than the walls of his room behind it. It was the fifth flame he’d conjured that night. They’d all been black and lightless, though he’d tried to change that.

He closed his hand over the flame, and put it out.

* * *

The Central Library was the largest on campus, followed by a close second in the Magic Library. Witches liked to boast about how well-educated they were, and this entailed large collections of spellbooks and other texts. Renun supposed that the only reason it wasn’t as large as the Central Library was that witches also kept their more obscure texts for themselves, stowing them away in extensive home collections.

The vampires didn’t have a library on campus. They had a floor in the Central Library with general knowledge and other bland information. Rumor was that the more powerful families had secret collections at their private estates.

The four of them made an odd group walking into the Central Library. It was late enough (or early enough for the vampires) on a Friday night that there shouldn’t have been many people, but close enough to finals that it wasn’t empty. Renjun had pulled on a nondescript hoodie just in case. He didn’t need to be seen hanging around Jaemin. It wouldn’t be that weird because it was old news that Jaemin and Donghyuck were friends, but it’d still be enough for people he didn’t need the attention of to take notice.

Chenle looked equally uncomfortable. It was worse for him because he didn’t hang with either Jaemin or Donghyuck, and both of them didn’t think much of the attention they attracted. Jaemin didn’t seem to notice most of the time, and Donghyuck basked in attention. Donghyuck was loud even in whispers, even in the library, earning a glare from the librarian. He’d probably be louder if he knew it made Chenle uncomfortable. Jaemin was loud in a different way, with colorful clothes and that stupid smile that drew the eye to him.

Lucky for them, there weren’t many third years there. By third year, students had been through enough finals to get lazy about studying, and they all knew finals weren’t important that year. It was Placements that mattered.

“I can’t believe I’m spending my Friday night at the library,” Renjun said.

“I know you had nothing else better to do,” Donghyuck said. That was the problem with being roommates. Donghyuck did know.

“Watching TV is a better thing to do.”

“You were literally complaining yesterday about how there’s nothing good to watch.”

“I can rewatch shows. Whatever. I just want to enjoy being brain-dead without your judgment, Donghyuck.”

They walked among the shelves, looking for a section on demons. The Central Library had a sense of grandeur that made Renjun feel small. A great glass-stained window covered half the ceiling, and wooden arches led down to bookshelves the height of two people. There were ladders that could be slid across the shelves to get to the books on higher shelves, though the flashier way was to fetch them with magic. Magic only worked if you knew what you were looking for though, or if you were willing to get chased out by the librarian for bringing down a full row. Long tables were set in the middle of each floor, with some smaller ones around the side and a few pods that were pretty much floating half-enclosed armchairs. The pods were usually all taken.

The Central Library had four floors. The first floor was dedicated to history, literature, and the arts, the second floor to witches, the third to vampires, and the fourth to everything else. They went to the top floor, and found a section in the back marked with ‘Other Supernaturals’. It was a small section, little more than half of a row of the bookshelves, and dingy compared to the rest of the library. Renjun could see a coating of dust on the shelves.

“Looks promising,” Donghyuck said.

“Looks dirty,” Chenle said.

“Glad for once we agree on something,” Donghyuck said.

They split and began to search the titles. Renjun clambered up the ladder and looked through the top shelf. Some of the titles were faded, and he had to pull out the books to look at their covers. There didn’t look to be a particular order to the books, which made it more difficult. He saw a couple books on dragons, one on if familiars should be considered supernaturals, and one on humans with supernatural inclinations, placed one after the other.

After almost an hour of combing the shelves, Renjun found one book on demons. He tossed it down to Donghyuck, who flipped through it for a few minutes before putting it down.

“Useless, just like the rest of them. Same regurgitated stuff from school, just longer. Demons are evil, they can possess people, blah blah blah. None of them say how they do possession, though this one has a nice lengthy section on superstitions people have followed in the past that don’t work against possession. Did you know people used to think force-feeding someone salt would cure them? Notice it doesn’t say anything about something that does work.”

Donghyuck leaned against the shelves. He’d given up on the search a long time ago, convinced after the first half hour that they’d find nothing. After another fifteen minutes, Renjun joined him, and Jaemin not long after that. Chenle continued for another half an hour, but in the end he trudged back to them empty-handed. He shook his head, another nothing, and they headed back down.

“There’s still the other libraries,” Chenle said, without much hope.

“I think we’ve learned today that this is a waste of time. Why repeat the experience?” Donghyuck said.

“I’m going to agree with Donghyuck on this one,” Jaemin said.

Chenle jutted out his chin stubbornly. He looked around the library again. They were near the entrance now, and Renjun watched the hands of giant clock above it rotate. The smallest one spun in circles, passing the other two again and again.

Chenle turned, and began to stride with determination up to the librarian’s desk.

“What’s he up to now?” Donghyuck said. Renjun shrugged, and they followed him over.

“Can I help you?” the librarian was asking Chenle when they walked up behind him. The petite witch peered up at him over purple tinted frames more like sunglasses than reading glasses.

“Do you have books on demons here?” Chenle asked.

The librarian sat up straighter at that, her bubblegum purple curls bouncing. “Why do you need books on demons?”

“For, uh, some research.”

She leaned forward, gaze sharpening. “I know for a fact that the school doesn’t assign research projects on demons.”

“It’s for personal research,” Donghyuck cut in smoothly. “We wanted to know more about who the heroes of the Demon War were, since there isn’t much in the textbooks.”

The librarian relaxed somewhat at that. “Sorry, boys, all the information on that is in the Restricted section downstairs. You’ll need permission from a professor to get access, and you’ll need to be at least fifth years. Unfortunately none of you look like fifth years to me.”

“That’s a shame,” Jaemin said, looking indeed very sad. “I was so looking forward to learning more about the heroes of the past.”

The librarian looked startled. Even she wasn’t immune to his charm, Renjun thought with dismay. “Well now, sometimes exceptions can be made. You’ll still need a professor’s permission though.”

They thanked the librarian and left.

They hadn’t made it more than a few feet from the steps when Donghyuck shoved Chenle in the side.

“What was that for?” Chenle asked.

“Do you want everyone to know what we’re doing?” Donghyuck hissed.

“It was worth a shot,” Chenle said, rubbing his side.

“Right, and now she might tell the professors we’re looking into demons, and they might wonder, oh, why would they do that? Let’s keep an eye on them—”

“She doesn’t know who we are.”

“You don’t know that. You _assumed_ that.”

“To be fair, now we know there’s a Restricted section that has more information on demons,” Jaemin interjected. “So it wasn’t all for nothing.”

Chenle sighed then, and kicked at a pebble by the path. “How are we going to get in there though? There’s no way we’re going to get permission from a professor.”

A grin spread across Donghyuck’s face.

“No, no, no,” Chenle said. “You can go get yourself expelled. You’re not taking me with you.”

“What?” Donghyuck said innocently. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I think we’re forgetting something,” Renjun said. “Jaemin said Doyoung’s conscious now. Shouldn’t we ask him what happened?” Renjun didn’t want to get expelled either.

“They’re not letting anyone see him now, except the docs and the profs. Even Jeno can’t get in,” Jaemin said. “I don’t think anyone can get in if he can’t.”

Donghyuck grinned again.

* * *

Jeno saw Renjun across the way.

It was a Saturday morning, so it was weird that both of them were on campus. Jeno had come to see if he could get into Doyoung’s room. Doyoung had been moved to another room in the med ward since he was no longer in critical condition. It didn’t make sense that it’d be harder to see him now that he was getting better, but they’d kept all visitors out.

He’d gone early with Jaemin’s homebrewed coffee, to see if he could ply the new witch on duty when they switched shifts in the morning.

But the new witch on duty had been Ten, who’d looked at him, snatched the coffee out of his hands, and while chugging it down, told him, “You’ve got no chance of getting in now. Come back in a few days. And when I saw a few days, I mean a few days. Tomorrow’s not going to work either.”

Jeno hadn’t expected to see Renjun on his way back. Renjun hadn’t seen him yet. Without thinking, Jeno ducked behind the wall of the closest building. He remembered at the last moment to pull his aura in.

Renjun passed by. Even from the distance Jeno could smell him. There was the smell of some soap he used, and a slight musk of sweat he’d worked up from his brisk walk. Beneath that there was a sweet, savory, unmistakable scent. Blood. Dried at this point, because the scent had almost been covered by the others.

As Jeno watched, Renjun stopped mid-walk, looking at some rose bushes by the side of the building Jeno stood behind. Even in the winter, the roses had sprouted some buds, and there were a few blooms here and there. Jeno thought it was a waste of magic to keep flowers blooming out of season, but Renjun seemed to appreciate it, since he walked over to them. He got closer to where Jeno was standing.

Renjun knelt down by one of the bushes. Jeno thought he was going to put it his nose to one of the open flowers, but instead he snapped off one of the rose buds from the bush by its stem. He cupped a hand around the base of the bud.

Renjun turned his head from side to side, and Jeno pulled his own aura tighter. Seeing no one, he turned his attention back to the rose bud.

“Bloom,” Renjun said.

The bud in Renjun’s hand shivered, and opened in a flurry of petals. Each petal was black.

The smell of fresh blood hit the air. Renjun’s blood.

“Damn it,” Renjun said. He threw the rose at the ground. He looked at it for a long while, a hand to his face.

Then, perhaps thinking better of it, he knelt again and picked the rose up from the ground. He looked at the black rose, half flattened now, and looked so defeated somehow that though Jeno didn’t get why, he felt a pang of sympathy.

Renjun looked at the rose and closed his eyes. A black flame consumed the rose.

The scent of blood in the air grew stronger. Jeno's eyes riveted to a line of blood that was running down the hand that had held the rose. It trickled down to Renjun’s wrist. Renjun didn’t seem to notice, but Jeno couldn’t take his eyes off of it.

Renjun stood up, and continued walking the way he’d been going before, as if nothing had happened.

Jeno followed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> donghyuck is thinking of Great Ideas as usual, renjun is getting ?better? at magic, and we still haven't gotten to the end of third year. we will get there one day, i swear


	9. a little taste

Renjun turned the corner, and Jeno followed. Renjun glanced around himself, but not behind, which was lucky because even with vampiric reflexes Jeno wouldn’t have been able to hide.

Not that he needed to hide. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. Renjun was the one sneaking around, spilling his blood like he’d forgotten he shared a campus with vampires. Jeno supposed Renjun wasn’t doing anything wrong either, but Jeno’s instincts told him otherwise. He saw the way Renjun looked around furtively, like he didn’t want anyone to see what he was doing.

Jeno let himself fall farther behind. Somehow the scent of blood was clear enough that he’d be able to track it from a distance, even though the other scents of the school should’ve covered it more than that.

Jeno tried to understand what he’d seen. Magic, clearly, and blood, more clearly. At least that part was clearer to Jeno. Logic would say Renjun had nicked himself on the rose’s thorns, but Jeno knew he had not. Vampires had good senses, and his were better than most. That wasn’t his arrogance talking. It was just a fact, and one many of his classmates and professors would have backed up. He would have noticed if Renjun cut himself picking up the rose.

The scent of blood had manifested from nowhere, as had the cut. There’d been no object that’d cut Renjun as far as Jeno could tell, and nothing Renjun had done to cut himself. No movement or motion, nothing at all. Nothing, then that tempting smell that flooded the air.

Jeno thought Renjun hadn’t been able to do much magic to begin with. He’d looked up his rankings, not for any other reason than because he was strange. Because Renjun could do what witches shouldn’t be able to do – feel auras and challenge them. Jeno didn’t know what he’d expected to find, but he’d been disappointed to see that Renjun’s record was not only unremarkable, it was dismal. He’d been near bottom of class all his years at the Academy, including this one. It was a little strange that there weren’t any prior rankings from whatever previous intermediate-level academy he’d gone to, but not strange enough to be actually interesting. A few students came from intermediate-level academies outside the region, and those were known to be secretive about their records.

So Jeno had to live with the fact that he’d freaked out over a witch that should have been of no note at all. He’d only freaked out a little, and at a party, but he’d made it out to be a Big Deal by then asking the witch about it. It felt pretty uncool.

Jeno followed Renjun around the corner, feeling more unsure about whether he should follow him at all. He knew he shouldn’t be hanging around a low ranking witch just to satisfy his curiosity.

That hadn’t stopped Jaemin though.

Jeno followed Renjun into one of the witch’s buildings. He thought it might be an advanced magic one, since he’d seen Doyoung meet his witch partner there before. He trailed Renjun down the hallway, and around a couple turns, until he saw Renjun walk into the restroom.

Jeno hestitated there outside the door, feeling a little weirded out by the idea of following someone into the restroom. He’d already followed him so far though. In the end his curiosity pushed him forward. That, and the scent of blood.

The door opened soundlessly, and Jeno walked in without Renjun noticing. He leaned against the wall, and waited.

The water was running. Aside from the two of them, the bathroom was empty.

Renjun was standing over the sink, rinsing the blood off his hand into the water. It dulled the scent, which should’ve dulled the small craving Jeno felt, but instead the lingering remnants made him crave more of it.

He felt a profound sense of loss watching the blood go down the drain. What a waste.

Renjun turned off the faucet. He looked at himself in the mirror, smoothing down the sides of his hair.

“What was I thinking?” he said to his reflection. Jeno wanted to know that too. Blood started to bead at the edge of the cut again. Jeno could see now that it was a horizontal cut across the top of his knuckles. The blood lined the cut slowly.

Renjun looked at it and grimaced. “I’m an idiot. Why did I do this now?”

This was the moment to confront him. Why are you bleeding? What were you doing? If Jeno could get it all out in the open, he could finally get the witch off his mind. It was all on the tip of his tongue, and Renjun wouldn’t be able to hide the truth from him, not as one of the lowest ranking witches of the grade.

But Renjun reached out to turn the faucet back on, and Jeno’s gaze went back to the line of blood on his hand. Before Renjun had turned the handle halfway, Jeno asked, “Do you want help with that?”

Renjun whirled around. His eyes widened when he saw Jeno.

“What the hell…”

Renjun swallowed down the rest of his words. Jeno was impressed with how fast he composed himself, the shock funneling into a familiar wariness, the eyes going back to their normal size, his facial expression smoothing over. Renjun leaned against the sink, a casual pose that just about hid his bleeding hand behind his torso. It would have been convincing if Jeno couldn’t hear Renjun’s heart beating fast against his ribcage.

“Help with what? What are you doing here?” Renjun said. His control over his voice wasn’t bad either. He was making some effort to sound as casual as he looked, not friendly per se, but not cold.

Jeno prowled forward. He could see Renjun wanted to step back from the way his stance shifted, but he held his ground as Jeno drew closer to him. Jeno stopped less a step away.

Jeno leaned closer, and Renjun tensed. His knuckles were white against the sink, and the line of blood a stark red against it. Jeno looked at the line for some time before focusing on Renjun’s face.

Jeno could tell Renjun was trying to hold onto some veneer of calm. A part of him liked that Renjun’s heart was beating fast because of him, because that was normal and right and the kind of reaction a low ranking witch should have. None of the aura-manipulation, aura-feeling bullshit, none of Jeno losing control. It’d be even more right if he could make Renjun lose his calm.

“Even if I can’t see it, I can smell it,” Jeno said. He leaned closer still, and Renjun let go of the sink, no longer trying to seem casual. He tried to take a step back, but Jeno caught his hand, the one with the blood, and pulled it between them. “I saw everything. Want to tell me how you got this?”

Jeno saw then that there were several small dots of discoloration and pale lines across Renjun’s hand. They were barely visible, and Jeno might have missed them if he hadn’t been looking right at Renjun’s hand. He turned Renjun’s hand over and saw a larger line, a bit more distinct than the others, across Renjun’s palm and two more dots on the tips of his fingers. He turned Renjun’s hand back over. He flicked his eyes toward the cut.

“What is this?”

“Can you not…” Renjun pulled at his hand, but Jeno didn’t let go. He gave up on the effort with an exasperated sound. “It’s a cut.”

Jeno resisted the urge to shake Renjun for that answer. “From the rose?” he said.

Renjun’s eyes widened again, but only a bit at the edges.

“I did say I saw everything,” Jeno said.

Renjun recovered as fast as before. He was good at it, almost practiced. “If you saw everything, then you know it’s from the rose,” he said.

It was a smooth delivery, but Jeno had been waiting for that small rise in pulse. Even if he hadn’t felt it, he would’ve said the same thing. “You’re lying.”

Renjun didn’t look guilty about it. So he’d been expecting Jeno to catch his lie, but he thought he’d give it a try anyway. Renjun bit his lip, thinking. Jeno was about to demand an answer, so Renjun didn’t have time to come up with a half-truth, because Jeno knew that was what he was doing, when Renjun said, “It’s for magic.”

It wasn’t a lie.

It could have been a half-truth, but it would do. For now.

So there it was. Blood for magic.

What Jeno found interesting was that it was for magic, and not because of magic. “What kind of magic?”

“Normal magic,” Renjun said, a level of defiance in his gaze. “My magic is like this. I don’t know why either.”

Also truth. But then why hadn’t Jeno seen these cuts last time? He had to admit he hadn’t been paying that much attention.

“Just like you don’t know why you feel auras,” Jeno said.

Renjun looked to the side. “Can you let go? I want to wash my hands.”

“That’s not going to get all the blood off. This cut’s deeper than the others you’ve had.”

If it bothered Renjun that Jeno had noticed the other lines on his hand, the only sign that betrayed him was a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“And you have a better idea?” Renjun said.

Instead of replying, Jeno pulled Renjun’s hand up, and leaned his head down.

“What are you—? ”

Renjun’s words cut off as Jeno began to run his tongue across the line of blood.

Jeno knew it was a mistake as soon as his tongue touched Renjun’s skin. The taste of the blood in his mouth wasn’t so different from blood he’d had before, but it tasted damned good, better than most blood he’d had before. It was lighter in spice than the usual witch blood, and richer, almost as rich as human blood. There was a dark savory tang that hit the back of his throat when he swallowed.

A taste wasn’t enough. He lapped at the cut again, and Renjun’s hand shivered against his mouth. His fangs came out, and he grazed the tip of one against the skin. Renjun made a noise, almost a whimper but choked off at the end.

“Stop,” Renjun breathed, but he didn’t move his hand from Jeno’s.

It took all Jeno’s self-control not to break the skin. He forced his head back up, and let go of Renjun’s hand.

“See?” Jeno said, as if it’d been easy to let go and he wasn’t still thinking about the taste in his mouth.

The cut across Renjun’s knuckles was closing as he spoke. Benefits of vampire saliva, so that the ones they bit didn’t walk around dripping blood. It didn’t get rid of the marks, but it sealed them. Renjun’s cut would seal into a pink line soon, and in a few days that would be gone.

“Thanks,” Renjun said dully. He looked entirely horrified and not at all grateful, and Jeno didn’t need his vampiric senses this time to tell that Renjun was lying.

Before Jeno could say anything else, Renjun pushed past him and sped out the restroom.

Jeno watched him go, dumbfounded. He looked at his own reflection in the mirror, as if his mirror image would tell him why Renjun had practically run from him. He could still see Renjun’s horrified face in his mind’s eye, and at the same time, he could feel the shiver that had run through Renjun’s body when his lips touched Renjun’s skin.

* * *

Renjun walked down the corridor. As he moved, he tried to forget. His hand tingled where Jeno’s tongue had touched him. It lingered against his skin, even after he’d rubbed it against his clothes, trying in desperation to get the feeling off.

It was the feeling of Jeno lapping at his hand, Jeno’s tongue brushing against his knuckles, wet and soft and gentler than Renjun imagined he could be.

It was always strange to him that vampires’ mouths felt warm when the rest of their bodies were cool to the touch. Or cold if it was winter, which it was.

Jeno’s fingers had been cold against his.

That should have felt wrong to him, like holding the hands of corpse. But Jeno’s hands hadn’t had the stiffness of the dead. They’d been callused but firm, with a grip that was unfair for someone his size and age, as Renjun had been annoyed to find out.

And it’d only made the heat of his tongue feel hotter.

Stupid vampires and their stupid lack of personal space. Jaemin was the same, putting his head too close when Renjun wasn’t expecting it, sitting with his body pressed against Donghyuck’s (or Renjun’s when he’d allow it, but that wasn’t often), greeting them with a casual touch. Renjun would tell him off for it later. At least Jaemin hadn’t licked him.

Jeno hadn’t thought anything of it, Renjun could tell. Renjun shouldn’t blame him for it, though he did. When he got his daily meals by chomping on someone’s neck, licking a hand was probably the same thing as…eating the last tortilla chip from the bag, or that grain of rice at the bottom of the bowl. Or maybe like scratching an itch that had suddenly and annoyingly appeared out of nowhere. You had to do it, but it wasn’t like you thought about it.

Renjun wasn’t sure which comparison was better. The one that made him feel less like a snack, he decided.

Jeno had done it so easily, so _casually._

Renjun tried to school himself to the same level of indifference. Most witches wouldn’t have thought much of it, right? Be cool. Be casual.

But he wasn’t only a witch, and maybe that meant he couldn’t be so casual about it. He felt sick to his stomach that after all this time, the touch of a vampire still brought up old feelings he thought he’d erased long ago. Feelings that came tinged with shame and the phantom ghosting of fangs sinking into his neck. It felt like it were yesterday in those abandoned classrooms, nervous and young, wanting what he knew he shouldn’t want, silly enough to confuse the vampire’s wanting and his wanting with trust. Almost silly enough to offer up his secret – that he was half-human – so maybe it’d been lucky that the vampire had gotten bored of him before that.

The worst part was the cravings. Those had taken much longer to get rid of than the vampire.

Renjun knew, though he hated to admit it, that there was a part of him that wanted to turn around, go back to the restroom, and throw himself in front of Jeno. It was a very, very small part, but it was there. He wanted to be proud that he’d almost quashed it out of existence. Only two and a half years of self-repression, avoiding half of his grade, and being that roommate that didn’t let Donghyuck host parties at their place because he had too many vampire friends! But that it was there at all made him afraid.

It was like he’d learnt nothing from the years of Human Studies lessons that spoke of humans as blind sheep. The authors didn’t intend to make it sound that way, and that was almost worse. These were the words that came from human sympathizers, from people who dedicated their lives to studying non-supernaturals. Who helped codify laws for the protection of humans. Renjun must have learned something from that.

Or worse, he had learned, but he didn’t care, because in his veins ran the blood of generations of sheep, and even knowing what he was would not stop him from doing what the sheep did.

Renjun knew a lot of witches shared blood with vampires. That kind of thing was casual too, usually for fun and sometimes something more. It could get complicated, and it could be embarrassing, but mostly only because it could be turned into gossip of who’s with who, or who’s into who, or who’s sharing blood with how many vampires now?

It might have been easier for Renjun if he hadn’t seen some of the human pets the older vampires kept around, that followed them with blind adoration. He’d looked one in the eye once, and he still considered that one of the biggest mistakes he’d made since entering the Academy. He’d never seen such blank eyes. They lit up when turning toward the vampire, but other than that they’d been windows into a deep, dark nothingness.

Renjun walked faster, trying to shake off the last of that phantom sensation on his hand. Before he knew it, he’d arrived outside the third floor office that was his destination.

The door was half open. Professor Seo spotted Renjun before he could knock, and waved him in.

Renjun had never been in Professor Seo’s office before. It was messier than he expected from the new head of the advanced magic department, with books and papers stacked on each other in haphazard fashion. There was a goldfish tank that held no goldfish but did have two tentacled creatures with sharp teeth. They snapped at each other. A map lay across Seo’s desk. It looked like a map of the school, the city, and the surrounding areas, and had a series of marks on it. One of the marks was near the border of the school and the forest, and the others farther out.

Professor Seo sat in a plush chair that could swivel and had wheels at the bottom, rummaging through a cabinet in the back. He pushed himself over to the front of his desk, somehow dodging a couple precarious stacks of books and a typewriter on the ground.

“Sit anywhere you like,” he said.

Renjun wasn’t sure where that meant. There was one other chair, but it held a globe that rotated slowly. Renjun picked his way in among the stacks, and eventually chose a stack of large books next to Professor Seo’s desk. It was the most solid of the stacks, and seeing no protest from Seo, Renjun perched on top of it.

Professor Seo looked older than Renjun remembered, his face more gaunt and tired.

“Sorry for calling you out on a Saturday morning, Mr. Huang,” Professor Seo said. “I’m sure you’d rather be spending time with your friends. And, I hope, studying for your remaining finals.” He offered Renjun a smile that brought back some of his usual energy. “The reason I’ve called you here is to talk about Placements.”

That confused Renjun. When Professor Park pulled him aside on the last day of class and told him he had an appointment with Seo, he hadn’t known what to expect. He’d been trying not to think about it, because he couldn’t think of a good reason Seo would want to talk to him – he wasn’t going to be in any of the advanced classes.

Donghyuck’s guess had been that Seo was surveying students to get opinions on the professors. Since the old head of the advanced magic department had stepped down, there was an opening for a new advanced magic professor. It was no secret that Park was aiming for the position. That would explain why Park hadn’t looked happy when he told Renjun about the appointment.

“It’s your chance to get back at him,” Donghyuck had said. “Don’t mess it up. Do it for the greater good.”

Renjun didn’t think that warranted meeting with him, specifically, but he’d prepared some choice statements about Park just in case. It didn’t seem like he would need them.

“Are you sure you have the right person, Professor?” Renjun asked. This was the kind of question he’d expected be given to Donghyuck. Something along the lines of, ‘So let’s talk about Placements. I know you’re competitive, but no foul play is allowed. Yes, foul play done with magic is still foul play. No, you cannot disable someone before Placements.’

Renjun waited, somewhat hopefully, for the Professor to let him go home. He resisted the urge to fidget without great success, and kept from tapping his feet by moving his hands. He ran his fingers over his knuckles before realizing he was going over the cut that Jeno had...

He forced his hands to his sides.

“Yes I’m sure,” the professor said. He seemed amused by Renjun’s question. “You see, we wanted to do things differently this year. I know that we usually don’t put the lower half of the class in Placements, but I wanted to change that. I believe that witches’ skills can’t be entirely determined by their performance in the classroom, so this year we’re giving everyone the opportunity to join Placements, regardless of their class ranking. I’m meeting with you today to give you a choice between joining Placements or taking the written final as you originally would have.”

Renjun stared at Professor Seo, not sure if he was hearing right. The bottom half of the class never joined Placements, so he hadn’t thought about them, other than what ugly picture of Donghyuck’s face he’d paste on the banner to cheer him on. Unlike most of the other witches his grade, Renjun didn’t aspire to Placements. It was just one of those ‘other’ aspects of the non-human world that surrounded him but were parallel to his existence, like advanced magic classes and training squadrons. They weren’t on the path of life he envisioned for himself, when he could envision much at all – the whole being a witch thing had thrown a wrench into planning for the future. Even if he were to join the Placements, even if there were some small part of him that did want to get into one of the advanced magic classes just to prove that he could, he didn’t know where that would take him. As far as he could tell, advanced magic led to the med ward, or the training squadrons, or one of the crafter guilds.

If he thought further than that, which he really didn’t, all three of those led to different places in supernatural society. It was a society he didn’t know, and not one he’d grown up as a part of. He wasn’t sure he wanted a place there, even after all this time at the academy. He wasn’t sure what he wanted.

As if he could sense Renjun’s doubt, Professor Seo said, “I don’t want to bias you, but I do urge you strongly to consider Placements. Think of it this way. If you continue with the written exam, you go into the general magic class by default. If you join Placements, the worst outcome, which is not a bad outcome at all, is also going into general magic. So the best case of the written exam is the worst case of Placements, and Placements gives you a chance to find a different aptitude. There’s nothing to lose.”

Aside from humiliating himself in front of all the professors and half the school.

“I’m not prepared,” Renjun said.

The professor nodded. “Quite understandable, given the late notice. I’m sorry for that. But I would like to add that while the Placements are a test of sorts, they are not meant to be prepared for. They are meant to draw out your natural reactions, strengths, and weaknesses from your years of learning thus far.”

“Did you talk with the others already?” Renjun tried to remember who else was in the lower half of the class, but he didn’t keep close track of the ranks except for those who’d floundered at the bottom with him for the past couple years.

“Most of them. So far all have made the choice to join Placements. It may be out of my place to say this, but given your few years with us at the academy and your unique disposition, I especially hope you do too. Of course, the choice is entirely up to you.”

Renjun hesitated still, but he knew if he didn’t say he’d join and Donghyuck found out, he’d get an earful (“How could you refuse a chance to be in the same magic class as me?” Though Donghyuck knew as well as he did that even if he pulled a miracle in Placements, they wouldn’t be in the same class). He didn’t have a real reason to say no. He just didn’t have a reason to say yes. The most likely outcome was ending up in the same general magic class anyway.

“I believe you have potential, Mr. Huang,” Professor Seo said.

He’d probably said that to every student, but it was those words that finally had Renjun nodding his head yes.

“Excellent,” the professor said. He reached into one of the stacks and pulled out a paper. “Now if you could sign this waiver.”

Renjun squinted. Did it say, ‘In case of death’?

* * *

“So what’d Seo want you for?” Donghyuck asked when Renjun got home.

“I’m going to join the Placements,” Renjun said.

Donghyuck choked on the cereal he’d just shoved into his mouth. Small bits of chewed up cereal went flying, a few back into the bowl of cereal, sinking into the milk.

“Gross,” Renjun said.

“This is what I get when I’m literally choking to death?” Donghyuck said, shaking his head.

“You’re not choking to death.”

“Since when were you a medical expert, Renjun?” Then Donghyuck’s gaze sharpened. “So I did hear that right, right? You’re joining Placements? No way. That’s awesome. How’d you do it?”

“How did I do what?”

“How did you convince Seo to let you join? I didn’t think you were such a sweet talker, Junnie.”

“I didn’t.”

Donghyuck waited.

“They’re letting everyone join this year. It’s a new thing Seo wanted to do now that he’s the head of advanced magic, I guess? He gave me a choice between taking the normal final and joining Placements. He’s been asking everyone.”

“Everyone?” Donghyuck’s mouth, still full of cereal, fell open. He closed it before more cereal could fall out. “You’re kidding.”

Renjun shook his head.

“Ew, not all those losers deserve a chance,” Donghyuck said. He was probably doing calcultions on the new competition as they spoke, and comparing their aptitudes to the number of places in each advanced magic class. “But you do, so I guess I’ll have to accept that. I totally thought you’d blackmailed Seo into it, but I should’ve known you wouldn’t resort to blackmail.”

Renjun winced, thinking of Mark. He hadn’t told Donghyuck yet how he’d gotten Mark’s help on the last assignment. Donghyuck didn’t miss the wince, and he stared at Renjun for a moment too long.

It made Renjun antsy, so he blurted out, “I don’t know if I even want to be in Placements.”

Donghyuck snorted. “What do you mean, don’t want to be in Placements? Everyone and their mother wants to be in advanced magic classes, and the only way there is through Placements.”

“Maybe I’m not everyone, then.”

“You don’t want to be in advanced magic?” Donghyck left his cereal then, and went over to Renjun. “Really?”

“I don’t know,” Renjun said.

Donghyuck stared at him again. “Why?”

“I don’t belong in advanced magic classes,” Renjun said.

Donghyuck’s eyes flashed. “Why do you say shit like that?”

“Because it’s true. And it’s not like I mean it in a bad way. I mean it in the way of wanting to be in a class where I can actually do the assignments and get a passing grade.”

“It’s not true,” Donghyuck said, with such conviction that Renjun could almost believe him. “I can’t believe you believe that. You’ve been in the academy for three years. The rest of us have been training our magic our whole lives.”

“I know that, but—”

“You’re not going to catch up overnight, but trust me when I say you can surpass some of these losers.”

“Maybe,” Renjun said.

“You sound like you’ve given up on Placements. Like you’re not going to try.”

When Renjun didn’t say anything, Donghyuck took his arm, forcing Renjun to look at him.

“You have to try,” Donghyuck said. Renjun couldn’t avoid his gaze. It was fierce and unyielding. Donghyuck was fire and brimstone, and Renjun had known this from the start. He burned hot and bright, unafraid to say what’s on his mind, unafraid to make his mark on the world. It’s what drew Renjun to him.

“Promise me you’ll try,” Donghyuck said.

Renjun had never been good at saying no to Donghyuck, not when he was serious.

So he said, “Fine. I will.”

He wasn’t sure he meant it.

* * *

Jeno wasn’t sure it’d been a good idea to let Jaemin rope him into this.

It hadn’t taken much. Jaemin had poked his head around Jeno’s door and said, “I’m going somewhere. You’ve got to come with.”

So he couldn’t really blame Jaemin. He hadn’t even bothered to ask where they were going because to Jaemin ‘you’ve got to come’ could be anything from going to a friend’s place down the hall to sneaking into a part of the city they weren’t supposed to be in without supervision. Either way, it’d be better than staring at the ceiling like he’d been doing since he woke up, his head heavy with useless thoughts. Since he still couldn’t go see Doyoung, and vampires didn’t have finals in third year, he found himself with a lot of free time.

As he’d followed Jaemin out, he maybe should’ve thought about it twice. Maybe he should’ve noticed that Jaemin was serious, rather than bursting with frenetic energy.

But he hadn’t, so here he was.

Renjun stood in the doorway. He didn’t look happy to see them.

“Come on Renjun, let us in,” Jaemin said. His tone sounded like he was wheedling, but Jeno had known him long enough to tell he was nervous. He wasn’t sure about this either. Great.

“Just because you’re allowed in here doesn’t make it an open invite to bring your friends,” Renjun said. He glanced at Jeno, then away. Long sleeves covered his hands, and Jeno wondered if the cut had healed yet, or if there were new ones.

“Junnie, come on,” Jaemin said. Jeno startled at the nickname – they were that close? But Renjun narrowed his eyes, unfazed.

“Don’t call me that. Only Donghyuck gets to call me that.”

“Junniee,” Jaemin whined.

Renjun looked to the ceiling. “Do you ever listen to me?”

“What’s the hold up?” Another voice came from within, and within a minute Donghyuck bounded up to the doorway. He saw Jeno, and smiled. Jeno wasn’t sure he liked Donghyuck’s smile any more than Renjun’s coldness. It had a calculating kind of look.

“Oh, Jeno, that’s a nice surprise. Come on in,” Donghyuck said.

“Donghyuck!” Renjun hissed.

“He can help us, Renjun,” Donghyuck said.

Jeno looked between the three of them. Jaemin looked distinctly guilty. “Help you with what?” Jeno asked.

“See? He doesn’t even know,” Renjun said.

“Plenty of time to find out,” Donghyuck said. He ushered the two of them in, ignoring Renjun’s glower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow i realized we are over 60k in, and jeno has only gotten the smallest taste  
> i respect all your patience, thanks for sticking with!
> 
> you may ask me, is it going to accelerate from here then? errr, probably... not? things will go as they goo
> 
> i'm not sure if i should post shorter updates once a week or longer updates biweekly... debating


	10. placements

The mood in the room wasn't much better after they got in. Jeno had a lot of regrets about following Jaemin without checking where they were going. It was going to be at least a week before he did that again.

Chenle nodded acknowledgement to Jaemin as they entered. He and Jeno shared a momentary look of surprise at seeing each other, and Chenle looked a little uncomfortable.

Donghyuck was the only one who looked pleased at the development. He claimed the one armchair.

"I would offer you something to drink, but you're vampires, so..." Donghyuck said.

"Well, I would like—”

"No, Jaemin, we don't have coffee. We only have tea. And we're not here to feed your addiction," Renjun said.

Jaemin made a face.

Because Donghyuck had taken the chair, the rest of them were forced onto the couch. It wasn't a couch meant for four, and Jeno found himself squeezed between Jaemin and Renjun. Jaemin leaned into him, but Renjun held himself a little apart so that their shoulders didn't touch. Their legs touched. That couldn't be avoided.

The mood among them all was tense. Renjun didn't look in Jeno's direction, and none of them spoke. Even Jaemin had a certain tension in his shoulders, almost unnoticeable, like he was impatient.

Donghyuck turned to them lazily, smug as a cat after a nap in the sun.

"We all know why we're here," Donghyuck said.

"I don't," Jeno said.

"Yes, captain obvious. But you will," Donghyuck said. "I was talking to the rest of them."

Jeno crossed his arms. "So you're not going to tell me what's going on?"

"All in good time. Why ruin the fun?"

Jeno was not having fun. He thought about walking out, but he did want to know why they had gathered here. And he didn’t want to seem dramatic.

Chenle twisted one hand in the other. "Jisung's not going to join, is he?" he asked. Then, with more steel in his voice, "Because if he is, I'm not."

"Doesn't seem like a bad tradeoff to me," Donghyuck said.

"If Chenle's out, I'm out," Renjun said.

"You can't be out, it was your idea in the first place," Donghyuck said. He turned to Jaemin. "Are you going to bring Jisung? Not that I think it's a bad idea, but I suppose majority rules. We can vote on it."

“I am not going to vote on it,” Chenle said, looking furious.

Jaemin looked at Chenle. "I haven't told him about it yet. I was going to, but I can wait on that."

"He wasn't home, was he? You would've asked him to come if he was," Chenle accused. He sat back into the couch with a scowl, pushing Renjun closer to Jeno. They bumped shoulders.

Renjun glanced at Jeno, mumbled, "Sorry", and scooted a little away again. His body heat was warm, and it felt nice against Jeno's body. Jeno had always appreciated the heat of witches, especially during the winter. Renjun sat forward, his elbows on his legs. Jeno looked at the back of his neck. He wasn't trying to, but it was in his line of vision.

"I would have," Jaemin said. He sounded confused, and politely apologetic. Seeing the look on Chenle's face, he added, "But I won't this time."

Donghyuck pulled out a paper with a series of squares and passages drawn between them. There was an X across one of the rooms, and some other symbols. "This, my friends, is a map of the med ward." He pointed at the symbols like stars at the edges of the map. "Those are the entrances. Each entrance has a receptionist, but there's a lot of foot traffic in and out, and if they don't see you, they can't check you in." He shifted his finger over to trace a dashed line. "These are the paths of the nurses and doctors on duty."

He traced one of the lines until he hit the X. "And this is Doyoung."

That got Jeno's attention.

Donghyuck smiled at him. “Interested now?”

* * *

To Donghyuck’s dismay, they decided that Donghyuck’s plans could wait until after Placements and the vampire evaluations. Those were at the end of the week, with Placements running from Thursday through Saturday and the evaluations on Sunday.

By that time, it was likely that they’d start allowing vistors to see Doyoung again, and they wouldn’t need to break in.

Jeno wasn’t keen on the idea of all of them crammed into Doyoung’s room, pestering him when he was still in recovery. “Why don’t you give me the questions you want to ask, and I’ll tell you what he says?” Jeno said.

“Because depending on what he says, I’ll have more questions, and I don’t trust you to come up with the right ones,” Donghyuck said.

Jeno’s lip curled. “I’m not asking like it’s a choice.”

Donghyuck’s lip curled too, but more in amusement than anger. “And I’m not asking for your permission.”

Jeno’s aura began to curl around him, thick and heavy. Renjun stiffened beside him, and he remembered that the witch could feel his aura. It disconcerted him enough that he forgot his anger for a moment, and his aura settled back down. Renjun’s shoulders relaxed.

Even knowing that Renjun could feel auras, Jeno hadn’t expected him to feel it so much. He felt strangely caught in the open, like Renjun saw more of him than he wanted to reveal.

Unexpectedly, Renjun piped up. “If next week, Jeno’s allowed to visit, and we aren’t, I think we should skip on breaking in and let him go by himself.”

Even more Jeno felt a sense of being caught in the open. Could Renjun feel how uncomfortable he was with strangers seeing Doyoung weak and recovering? Was he trying to help Jeno out?

Donghyuck pouted. “Then my planning will all have been for nothing. I had to sell one of my premium love potions for this map.”

Renjun side-eyed him. “Your love potions don’t actually work.”

Chenle snickered. Donghyuck glared at him, and Chenle stuck out his tongue. “I was trying to tone it down for you, but what I meant is a potion that gives you a massive boner and a lot of energy. Trust me, it’s premium stuff.”

“You would know that because—?”

Donghyuck wagged his eyebrows.

“Wait, I don’t want to know.”

“You sure about that Renjun? Because I can tell you all about it.”

Renjun rolled his eyes.

Jaemin leaned forward with interest. “So who’d you sell it to?”

“Can’t tell you that. Client confidentiality and all. I’d have to cut off a finger if I told you.”

Jeno wasn’t sure he was joking.

“I’m sorry you had to sell one of your premium potions,” Renjun said, not sounding very sorry at all, “but you know I’ve been on thin ice with Professor Park. I don’t want to be caught somewhere I’m not supposed to be.”

So that was why Renjun didn’t want to break into the med ward. Jeno felt relieved, but at the same time, vaguely disappointed.

“It’ll be after Placements,” Donghyuck said. “He doesn’t have any power after Placements, unless…” Donghyuck’s voice trailed off.

A look passed between Renjun and Donghyuck that Jeno couldn’t decipher. Donghyuck looked away first.

“Okay, I get it. Park could choose to be an ass. If Jeno gets permission before Placement results come out on Tuesday, then we can go without you.”

Jeno bared his teeth. “There’s no we in this.”

Donghyuck just smiled.

* * *

There was one way that Park could fail him. That was if Renjun failed Placements. They always said, “No one _fails_ Placements”, but Renjun had seen students fail before.

There was a time when some poor student got onto the stage, and all he did was stand there and shake for a solid minute. Even after the minute, everyone watched with bated breath, thinking he was holding back for dramatic effect.

Instead the student had thrown up on the stage.

It turned out later that besides being so nervous he'd almost pissed himself, he'd had the flu.

He still failed.

He left the academy after that, and to this day, students would say, "Don't pull a Junsu" when they wished each other good luck on Placements.

Failing wasn't the same as not getting into advanced magic. Failing was worse. Most students passed Placements but got into general magic. Getting into advanced magic meant they had extra skill, power, or a particular aptitude. Or that they spent the past three years kissing up to their professor of choice, which many students tried but few succeeded at.

Failing meant the student might have to repeat a year, at the discretion of their current Magic professor.

Renjun did not want to fail.

He could imagine the relish with which Park would tell him he'd failed for real, a big fat F along with the bigger fuck you of needing to repeat third year. The idea of taking another year with Park, and without Donghyuck, made him a little nauseous.

But it was hard to tell what the professors deemed failure.

Besides the vomiting boy, Renjun had seen someone fail only once.

The Placements changed every year, and sometimes from student to student. The student that had failed had breezed through all of the professors' challenges until the last. The last professor had asked the student to light three balls of flame. None of the other students had been asked to light more than two. The student hadn't been able to light three at the same time. He'd get up to two, and when the third one lit one of the others would go out. It went on like that until the professor told him to stop, and said in a very disappointed voice, “I’m sorry, but you’ve failed.”

That student's Magic professor had let him through to the next year's general magic class, but his classmates never looked at him the same.

"You'll be fine," Donghyuck had told Renjun many times, when Renjun could get him to talk at all. It was hard to believe when Donghyuck had become more of nervous mess than Renjun, for the first time in Renjun's memory. He'd built a kind of nest in their living room, with pillows, books, and papers strewn around. When he wasn't pacing around the room, mumbling to himself, he huddled under a blanket, his head buried in some obscure text. His glasses had come out—Renjun had forgotten he had glasses—and he responded to most of what Renjun said with vague noises of agreement.

Renjun had amused himself for a while from this.

"Renjun is the most beautiful being in this world," Renjun said.

"Uh-huh," Donghyuck said.

"You will buy Renjun a fancy dinner tonight," Renjun said.

"Yeah, sure."

"Chenle's cooler than you, and better looking too," Renjun said.

"That is not true," Donghyuck said, without lifting his head.

"That's where he draws the line?" Chenle said, disgusted. He'd come over so they could 'study for finals together'. Except that he had no finals because vampires didn't care about anything but evaluations third year, and Renjun had finished his finals. Really, Chenle had come over so they could laze around and complain about how unprepared they were.

"Now shut up before I curse you into eternal silence," Donghyuck said. He pulled large, black headphones over his ears, turned the music up loud enough that Renjun could hear it, and went back to his book. Renjun didn't know how '100 Ways to Bring Mild Inconveniences to Your Enemies' would come in handy during Placements, but he didn't question it. Donghyuck probably wouldn't have heard a question anyway. His threat was empty—he had hardly noticed them talking for the past half an hour even without his headphones on.

"It's unfair," Chenle said. "People like Jeno are raised for this from the moment they can walk."

"Raised for evaluations at school? That's oddly specific," Renjun said.

Chenle laughed, but his laughter faded as he continued to talk. "Raised to fight. To take others down, and be merciless about it. I bet his parents threw him in a ring with all his siblings when they were little and only kept the ones that came out alive."

"You're joking."

"Yeah, the big families wouldn't do that with their precious heirs. It's not easy for vampires to have children. Some of the big families used to make the lesser families do it with their children though. Or with their human pets."

Renjun's eyes snapped to him. "You..."

Chenle knew what he was asking. "No, it didn't happen to me. It's was kind of outlawed before I was born, because there'd been some talk of rebellion among the lesser families and the big families decided to be generous even though they didn't have to be. It was so very noble of them. That's what my parents say anyway. You should see how they suck up to the big families." Chenle's voice grew strained. "Especially Jisung's parents."

"Why Jisung's parents?" Renjun asked. He wasn't sure he should bring it up.

Chenle sighed, but he didn't look angry at the question. "Our family's a branch family of Jisung's. It means that some ancestor of mine way back when swore fealty to his ancestor, and so all of us are consigned to serve them forever. Great going, great great great uncle or whatever."

"You have to serve them?" Renjun asked. He'd sometimes seen a human pet catering to a vampire like a servant, but he'd never seen another vampire act like that. Chenle had his pride. Renjun couldn't imagine him being anyone's servant, and especially not Jisung's.

"By serve them I mean work for them. And if they argue with another vampire family, we have to take their side. My uncle's a bodyguard for Jisung's dad, for example. Luckily, nowadays there's lots of lesser families pledged to each big family, so there's not enough job openings for all of us. I don't plan to stick around."

"What do you want to do instead?"

"Anything else. Preferably the farther from home the better. I want to see somewhere else in the world." Chenle put his arms behind his head. "The one thing my parents were the most proud of me for in my whole life, my whole entire life, was being friends with Jisung when I was a kid. Their greatest disappointment is that I'm not friends with him anymore. I would say that they're disappointed with everything else I've done too, but I don't think they know what else I've done.

"They only remember what I tell them when it's about Jisung. Jisung this, Jisung that. They ask me how he's doing every time I go home, like I would know, and like they don't. 'Did you know Jisung skipped a grade? He's in your grade now.' We're not in the same grade. I'm a third year. They don't even know what grade I'm in."

Chenle had closed his eyes. He didn't sound mad about it. He stated it out like facts, with just a touch of bitterness.

"That's shitty," Renjun said. "I'm sorry I brought it up."

"Don't be," Chenle said. "It's nice to rant about it to someone for once. I don't get to do that much." He opened one eye and peered at Renjun. "What about you?"

Renjun blinked. He didn't feel like talking about home. "My mom's more normal, I guess." Aside from the distance he felt between them since he'd found out he had magic. Aside from the strange coldness in her the day she'd left him at the academy gates.

"No, I mean, what do you want to do?"

"For now? Graduate."

Chenle grimaced. "Same."

By nightfall, a few empty snack bags were scattered across the coffee table among a stockpile of full ones. There was an open bag of popcorn on the ground, about three-quarters full. Renjun wasn't sure Donghyuck had eaten any real food all day. He forced Donghyuck to eat some of the curry he made for dinner, but Donghyuck had pushed it away after a couple bites, saying he wasn't hungry yet. So Renjun had left a bowl for him on the table. It hadn't been touched.

Donghyuck had gone back to pacing around the room, lighting flames at the ends of his fingertips. He lit them one by one sequentially from thumb to pinky finger, then all at the same time, then in flashing patterns of 3 to 2 to 1 at a time to the beat of the music playing in his headphones. Occasionally he managed to pull his attention away from what he was doing, and fix a half-crazed stare at Renjun. "Go practice," he'd say.

Renjun had been practicing, if in a much more half-assed manner. It was hard to prepare when he didn't know what he was preparing for. The professors could ask them to do anything. The bigger problem was that he couldn't exactly bleed in front of them, and he didn't know if he could control his magic without that. He spent most of his time trying to figure out how to do magic without cutting himself. So far it hadn’t worked. The drop method, and any other method he could think of, were harder than he remembered. It was as if his magic were alive, as if it were pushing against him using it in the ways he did before. _This is the right way,_ it seemed to say. _This is the way you must choose._

Renjun didn't want to fail Placements, but he was running out of time.

* * *

Donghyuck was slotted for Thursday afternoon.

Donghyuck hadn't been able to sleep much all of Wednesday night. Renjun had stayed up with him in solidarity. While Donghyuck huddled in a cocoon of blankets on the couch, moving his right hand in gestures, Renjun found an old picture of Donghyuck sleeping on the bus, his mouth open and a line of drool trickling down the side of his face. Perfect.

Renjun enlarged the photo and printed out several copies. He stuck them onto a banner that had Donghyuck's name on it. Donghyuck didn't seem to notice the banner, though it lay in the open on the ground near him.

Renjun got bored, so he added some finishing touches. He drew a mustache on one of the photos, and angry eyebrows on another.

Even that lost its appeal quickly, because it got no reaction from Donghyuck.

Donghyuck's eyes were ringed with dark circles, and Renjun was beginning to see his veins in the whites.

"You need to get at least an hour of sleep," Renjun said.

Donghyuck kept mumbling to himself and forming shapes with his hands.

"Donghyuck, you need to sleep," Renjun said.

Donghyuck turned a bleary eye on Renjun. His gaze was dull, glassy.

"Sleep is for the weak," he croaked. "Pass me a 5 hour energy."

When Renjun didn't move to hand him the energy drink, he reached for it across the table. Renjun snatched it away. Donghyuck lunged for it, but in his weakened state it was a clumsy swipe, and he ended up half on the floor. He lay there on the ground in a heap.

Renjun thought he might have fallen asleep, but when he came closer to check, Donghyuck lunged at him again with a snarl. "Give it to me," he said.

Renjun evaded him without much effort, which was more a sign of how tired Donghyuck was than of Renjun's reflexes. Donghyuck was tired enough that he didn't go for his usual tactic of trying to talk Renjun into listening to him, a tactic Renjun indulged because it usually involved heavy flattery. He might have let it go on for a couple minutes once.

"Don't make me do this," Donghyuck warned. Renjun never learned what this was, because he pushed Donghyuck back onto the couch. Despite his words, Donghyuck didn't put up much resistance.

"If you can't pass, no one can," Renjun said.

"I don't just want to pass, I need to get into advanced attack magic. I need to impress Seo. Do you know how hard that is? Especially after what Mark did last year...I hate that guy why is he so good at everything... I haven't even gotten through all the water techniques...water's worse than everything else for me, and I knew that. I knew that! But I was putting it off, what if they ask me to do water..."

Renjun pushed Donghyuck onto his back and pulled up his blanket to his chin. It was worse than Renjun had thought. If Donghyuck was admitting that Mark was good, and admitting that he had weaknesses, he was really reaching the end of his rope.

"You’ll do great," Renjun said. "You'll do better than Mark.”

That brought a pleased, sleepy smile to Donghyuck’s lips.

“You'll blow everyone out of the water, but not if you stumble in half-dead like this."

Donghyuck shook his head, but he curled up in the blanket. His eyes closed, and he twitched them open again with effort. "There's no time."

"Just a couple hours. I'll wake you up," Renjun said.

Donghyuck had already fallen asleep.

* * *

Donghyuck stumbled over to the back entrance of the hall where Placements would take place. The sleep had helped some, but not much. The shadows under his eyes looked darker than ever. Even though Donghyuck's slot was in the afternoon, all the participants had to arrive at least 15 minutes before the first slot at 8am, and they didn't it was an automatic fail.

He'd cursed Renjun out for letting him sleep, but Renjun had snapped back at him, "There's no way you were going to pass like that." Which of course had pissed Donghyuck off more, but he'd surprisingly held his tongue and gone back to brooding over his books.

Renjun went around to the front entrance of the hall. The hall for Placements was set up like theater. A raised stage in the center faced rows of seats. Curtains were drawn over the stage, which would open for each session and close between. The seats were a stiff-backed wood, made to pinch student's asses so that they'd stay awake.

Renjun chose a seat near the front of the right section.

At 7:50 am exactly, a girl sauntered onto the stage. The robe she wore moved with her form, free and flowing, and even though it would fit right in at a fancy dinner party, he suspected she could fight in it. The robe, among other bizarre wardrobe choices Renjun had seen over the years, was one of those outfits that counted as full witch regalia for important occasions. He didn't have anything like that, but he had seen Donghyuck's much more tattered version. "A hand-me-down from my dad," Donghyuck had said. "You're never going to see me wearing this. Good for mopping up spills though."

"I'm your MC of the year, Arli," the girl said, in a magically amplified voice. From the number of marks on her arms, he guessed she was in her last year. The girl raised her hand in a wide circle, sending an arc of sparkles into the air that spread out into the word Placements, and hovered twinkling above her head before dispelling into the air. The audience clapped. The MCs were always showoffs.

While she went into a speech about the history of Placements and their unprecedented decision to let all students join Placements, Renjun looked around the audience.

The seats were a third full. This was less than usual, and Renjun thought it might have been because they’d let everyone join Placements. People would pick and choose who they wanted to see. No one wanted to endure these chairs for three full days to see third years fumble around with magic.

All of his third year class was here, aside from those with Thursday slots. There were some witches from the other years, mostly curious first and second years, and a few vampires.

Not many vampires came to Placements. Partially because they were held during the day, and partially because they weren't that exciting. The professors didn't usually ask for big, flashy pieces of magic. They asked for magic that required control, power, and precision, and nudged witches toward revealing their strengths and weaknesses. The magic could be difficult, and it could require a lot of effort, but it didn't need to look like much. Plus, they were third years. Most of them couldn’t do flashy magic yet.

"Now introducing our judges," Arli said. Renjun leaned forward. "Welcome to the stage four of our esteemed advanced magic professors. Professor Sora Kim, who personally built the barrier surrounding our school, with a specialization in defensive magic."

The professor walked out across the stage. She was the tallest woman Renjun had ever seen, and had on a pair of stiletto heels that made her even taller. She had an air of command, straight-backed, with her hair pulled into a high ponytail and blood red lips. Her face betrayed no hint of emotion.

"Professor Kei Li, once known as the angel of the battlefield, with a specialization in healing magic."

An old man followed Professor Kim. He had gray hair that went down to the middle of his back, and used a wooden cane to help himself move across the stage.

"Professor Dongsuk Seo, head of the advanced magic department, one of our academy's own alumni, with a long and illustrious training squadron career. Specialization in attack magic."

Professor Seo walked across the stage. He had on a rumpled dress shirt, and his hair was half smoothed down, as if he'd tried to tame it and had given up halfway. There was something mischievous in the way he smiled at the audience, but at the same time, he exuded power. The cheers for him were the loudest.

"Professor Jenna Koon, with a specialization in…" The MC peered at the notecard in her hand.

"Crafts and construction," a woman said, peeking her head out onto the stage. "They call it creation magic, but that’s not wholly accurate. So I say crafts. I dabble in art too."

She didn't look like Renjun’s idea of a professor at all. She looked younger than Park, though she couldn't have been. One of her eyes was green while the other was brown. She wore a baggy shirt and pants, and both were smeared with what looked like dirt. A large cresent earring dangled from one of her ears. When she walked across the stage there was a lightness in her feet, like she was about to jump but was holding herself back. Renjun didn’t notice until she got halfway across the stage that her feet were bare. A giant green parakeet flew in behind her, causing the MC to duck. It landed on her shoulder.

Renjun didn't know why, but he liked her.

"And of course, the professor of the third year students himself, the youngest professor in our academy, Professor Gunmo Park."

Renjun's heart sank. His classmates cheered and clapped. He didn't.

The professors lined up at the front of the stage, in front of the curtain. There was a final round of applause, and after it died down, they stepped down from the stage and took their seats.

The curtain opened for the first student.

* * *

The day passed in a blur. Each slot was 30 minutes, though sometimes they ended sooner than that. By noon, one student’s session started to meld into the next in Renjun’s memory.

The professors went in the same order for each round. It was Park, Kim, Li, Koon, then Seo.

Park was the warm up. He asked for one of the fundamentals from class, usually a simplified version of one of their assignments.

Professor Kim made the same request each time. She asked them to form a spherical barrier around a red ball, inspected it, and broke it.

Professor Li had a stack of clothing beside him, almost as tall as he was, with different sized holes and rips in each of them. He'd pass the student one of the clothing items, and watch as they tried to fix it. At first, Renjun suspected those were his own clothes, and he was using Placements to get them mended. However as more students failed to fix the clothing, and Li's frown grew, Renjun came to a more accurate conclusion. Those were Li's clothes, but they weren't going to get fixed from Placements. Li hadn't expected them to get fixed. But his woeful look as much of his clothing got more damaged rather than less was pretty hilarious.

The audience was most excited for Seo's test. Seo started with one request. For most students he asked them to bring forth flame. For others, he asked them to attack him or Professor Kim. For a few others he'd get on the stage and engage them in hand-to-hand combat. Renjun didn't see the point of that. He thought maybe the professor was bored and wanted to pin down a couple students. Sometimes the test ended with the one request. Other times Seo would make more requests - can you manipulate the shape of the flame? Can you make it hotter? Can you attack more than one of us at once? Can you try a different attack? Is that all you've got?

The last wasn't a request, and was asked only once to a boy that Seo had in a headlock on the ground. The boy had whimpered his defeat, and Seo had let go in disgust.

Renjun knew now why Johnny was so good at wrestling. His dad was a monster. Renjun prayed that he wouldn't be asked to do hand-to-hand combat. Anything but that. As an afterthought, he prayed that Donghyuck wouldn't be asked to do it either, though Renjun knew he'd take up the challenge with relish.

Unlike the rest, Renjun looked forward the most to Professor Koon's test. A lot of the other students in the audience tuned out when it came to her turn—they didn't care about crafts. Most students who had a chance at advanced magic wouldn't choose crafts unless they had no other choice. Each year less than ten students joined advanced creation magic. In the hierarchy of classes, which was determined more by the fame of the professors, gossip, and who made the training squadrons than anything else, crafts was less than one step above general magic ed. There were a couple students in the past who had been disappointed enough that they even chose general magic over crafts.

Even Donghyuck had said, "It's pretty but it's useless. When's the last time you heard of anyone from crafts joining a training squadron? What they're best known for is having a gallery at the end of each year, and that gallery is only known because they provide free, nice wine."

That was the thing. It wasn't clear what crafts students did. There were so few of them, and they didn't talk much about what they did. Actually, Renjun wasn't sure if they didn't talk about it, or if no one cared.

Their gallery at the end of the year was known for showcasing a couple projects each year, and each year the viewers came, drank, and wondered in tipsy bemusement why the projects were showcased. Unlike what Donghyuck had said, the showcased projects weren't pretty. They were random, and strange. The construction of the interior of a house, except that all the staircases led to nowhere, and the doors opened on timed intervals. A fish tank where if you looked at it long enough, one of the fish's faces would transform to your face, and get eaten by another fish.

During her turn, Professor Koon would open a drawstring bag she carried. The parakeet on her shoulder would rummage through the bag, pick out a couple of items, and drop them in her palm. She'd give those to the student, and say, "Make me something."

The items could be anything—paints, chalk, wooden blocks, scissors, toothpaste and two hairbrushes. Sometimes the students didn't try. The one given wooden blocks stacked them one on top of the other without magic. "Tah-dah," he'd said, no disguise for his contempt. Neither Professor Koon nor any of the other professors were bothered by this.

* * *

Donghyuck's slot was at 5pm. When 4:50 rolled around, Renjun felt his gut clench. He was more nervous that he'd expected to be for Donghyuck's Placements. Maybe it was because he'd seen a Donghyuck different from the normal one over the past several days. A Donghyuck who wasn't self-assured, confident, and ready for anything, who bit at others with sarcasm if they dared to doubt him. He'd seen a Donghyuck with hollow eyes, who though he still moved with the air of someone who knew their magic and their potential, who though he'd never admit that he had any weaknesses to someone other than Renjun, had in private been quiet and unsure. Had looked at Renjun with a touch of uncertainty that wasn't at all the Donghyuck he knew.

Renjun knew Donghyuck had that side of him. He had his insecurities like they all did. But even as one of Donghyuck's closest friends, he wasn't used to seeing them.

During those moments it felt like the world shifted.

If someone like Donghyuck wasn't sure of himself, how could any of them be?

A hand tapped the seat beside him. "Can I sit here?"

Renjun looked up.

Jaemin waved at him, wearing a pair of dark sunglasses. He took them off as he sat and tucked them into the front of his shirt. He hadn't waited for Renjun's response. The seats beside Renjun were obviously not taken.

"I didn't think you'd come," Renjun said. 5pm was early for vampires, though it wasn't entirely out of the ordinary.

"Of course I'm here to support. What kind of friend would I be otherwise?" Jaemin said. "I'll come for yours too."

"You don't have to," Renjun said. "Mine's at—”

"Saturday 10am, right?"

"Yeah." In other words, not at a time most vampires would be caught awake. Renjun tried again. "You really don't have to come."

"I'll be there," Jaemin said with confidence. Renjun groaned internally. He didn't want Jaemin to come. The vampire's presence would raise questions among his classmates, and he wasn't sure he wanted Jaemin, who he had only recently, tentatively, and somewhat against his will called a friend, to see his Placements. He’d had enough of people seeing the state of his magic, without adding vampires into the mix.

And maybe he was afraid that afterward, Jaemin would look at him differently.

Some of his classmates had turned around, and were looking at him with a mixture of wide and narrowed eyes. More heads turned, their gazes behind Jaemin, and Renjun saw Jisung and Jeno file in after Jaemin.

Renjun shrank in his seat. Joowon looked murderous, mouthing something to the witch sitting next to him that looked suspiciously like, "Why are they with him?" Which Renjun might have been able to appreciate if there weren't other witches that looked the same way.

Jisung looked a little lost. Renjun remembered that even though he was a second year, he'd skipped a grade and it was his first year at the academy. Ever since that night at Asomateus, he hadn't been able to unsee Jisung as a gawky kind of cute, even though he told himself it would bite him in the ass to think that way. He noticed details that he hadn't seen past the vampiric I'm-too-good-for-you air before, like that first year wandering gaze, with starry eyes and hope not yet beaten out by a routine of studying and tests.

When Renjun saw Jeno, the back of his hand tingled, though the cut had long since healed. Renjun pushed the hand under his other arm, trying to bury the feeling. Renjun had tried so hard to forget what happened, and told himself it was normal, told himself no one else would have been bothered by it. Sometimes it worked, especially with Placements coming up. He didn't have time to think. But the image, and worse, the feeling, of Jeno's tongue against his hand came back when he closed his eyes late at night. At least the exhaustion of staying up with Donghyuck had kept that from his mind.

He resisted the urge to stiffen up when Jeno's eyes met his. He stared at him back, unwilling to be intimidated, because if he was intimidated just by looking how was he supposed to get control over himself? When Jeno looked away first he felt a short burst of triumph, but it didn't last long because now he was just looking at Jeno with his face turned to the side.

Jeno had an unreasonably attractive side profile. Even with sunglasses on, and a dark sweater with a hood obscuring most of his form, Renjun could follow the line of his forehead, trace it over his nose, and down to his chin. Renjun looked away then.

Not this again.

The three vampires were more conspicuous because they came in wearing sunglasses and dark clothing like some kind of cultish group. Luckily they weren't the only ones coming in. More witches from the upper and lower years and some other vampires filed into the hall, making their way through the aisles to empty seats. Most of the vampires had similar levels of sun protection, thick clothing, sunglasses, and a couple umbrellas.

"I thought you didn't burn in the sun," Renjun said to Jaemin.

"We don't as long as we’re well-fed, but we still have delicate skin. I don't want to come in looking blotchy. Or worse, get a sunburn."

"You have heard of sunscreen, right?"

"It doesn't work on vampires," Jaemin said with a sigh. Renjun was unsympathetic.

In a matter of minutes, the seats went from less than a third full to almost full capacity. Even Renjun hadn't predicted the size of the crowd, though Donghyuck was the top ranked witch of third year. The crowd didn't worry Renjun. Donghyuck performed better with an audience.

Renjun tried to scoot a little away from Jaemin. A decent amount of his classmates were distracted by the others streaming into the hall, but for the rest, Renjun wanted to give the impression that Jaemin, Jeno, and Jisung had just happened to sit next to him.

Jaemin slung an arm around Renjun's shoulders, making it pointless. Renjun resisted the urge to elbow Jaemin in the chest.

"Is this seat taken?" Another voice came from Renjun's right, and he looked up to see Mark.

"Mark!" Renjun said. He hadn’t seen Mark since they’d locked down into finals season. For some reason, he felt so happy to see him that he pulled Mark into a one-armed hug.

"Hey," said Mark, a little taken aback. He patted Renjun on the back awkwardly, and sat down beside him.

"Who's that?" Jaemin asked. He wasn't smiling like he usually did at strangers, and regarded Mark with an appraising gaze that Renjun would almost have called cold.

"This is Mark, the best witch in fourth year," Renjun said.

Mark's cheeks reddened. "I'm not the best witch in fourth year," he said, ducking his head, while Renjun rolled his eyes. A paragon of humility, Mark.

"In his Placements, he blew up half the stage and almost took down Seo with it," Renjun said. "It took them weeks to rebuild the hall."

Mark reddened more. "It was an accident." He turned toward Jaemin, Jisung, and Jeno. "Mark," he said, holding out a hand. The three vampires introduced themselves. Jaemin shook hands with Mark and smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes.

Jaemin leaned close to Renjun, so that Renjun could feel Jaemin's breath against his ear when he spoke. "How come I didn't get that kind of greeting?" he said.

From the corner of his eye, Renjun saw Jeno's eyes on them from over Jaemin's shoulder. Renjun swatted at Jaemin. "Because you're annoying."

The curtains opened, and everyone went quiet. Renjun pulled out his banner with Donghyuck's face on it, and held it up.

Mark looked at the banner and laughed silently. "Sometimes I wonder if you're really friends," he whispered to Renjun.

Donghyuck stood at the center of the stage, taking in the crowd. There was none of the nervousness from earlier. He stood at ease. His dark circles weren't visible under the bright stage lights, and he looked more alive than Renjun had seen him all week, flashing a devil-may-care grin at the crowd. He raised one hand in a two-finger salute.

Professor Kim's mouth drew into a disapproving red line at his cavalier attitude.

“Darken the stage,” Park said. The stage was large enough that this was a harder request than he'd given any of the other students so far. Park must still have been mad about Donghyuck's last assignment. The other professors noticed but didn't comment, though Kim turned her disapproving expression toward Park.

Donghyuck was unfazed. With the sound of rushing wind, the center of the stage became black as true night. The darkness spread out until it hit the edge of the stage. Park didn't call for a stop for several minutes, as if he could wait out Donghyuck's magic. When the darkness didn't fade over time, he finally said, "That's enough."

The darkness winked out, and Donghyuck was visible again.

The next two tests Donghyuck completed with the same ease. He built a gray smooth barrier around the red ball Professor Kim handed him, the size of a small boulder. Kim had to come onto the stage to inspect it. She walked around it, tapping on its surface before striking it with her hand. It took her two strikes to put a crack into it. After she sat again, her blood red lips curled up into a shape that resembled a smile, the only emotion Renjun had seen on her all day besides disapproval.

Donghyuck fixed one of Li's shirts with a stain and two holes near the elbow. It took him less than a minute. The fibers wound themselves back together in movements too small for Renjun to see. "Very nice, very nice," Li said as he took his shirt back. Renjun wasn't sure if he was pleased with Donghyuck's magic, or just that he'd managed to get one shirt patched up right.

Professor Koon handed Donghyuck a mirror for her test. He seemed to give it some thought, before calling up a ray of light. He angled the light against the mirror and began to move the mirror back and forth. Wisps of smoke curled from the bottom of the stage. When he was done, Donghyuck's name had been burned into the bottom of the stage.

Koon grinned. "You're a cheeky one," she said. But she didn't praise his work or offer constructive criticism like she'd done for others.

Donghyuck turned to face Seo. He ran a hand through his hair and smiled lazily. To the rest of the audience, his self-assurance was almost arrogant, but Renjun knew Donghyuck well enough to know it came from nerves. It was the kind of bravado Donghyuck pulled out when he wasn't sure of his abilities, a smile too big, often accompanied by bigger words.

Perhaps Seo had taught enough students like Donghyuck to see through his facade. He didn't look put off, but instead smiled reassuringly.

"A flame if you please, Mr. Lee," he said. "As small as you can make it."

Renjun almost sighed in relief. Fire was Donghyuck's specialty. Donghyuck held up a finger. Renjun didn't see anything on it, but Professor Seo nodded. "Now make five of those, and larger."

A blue flame appeared above each of Donghyuck's fingertips.

"Can you manipulate the movement of your fire?" Seo asked.

Donghyuck nodded.

"Good." Seo waved a hand, and five disks the size of Renjun's palm appeared in the air around Donghyuck. "Eliminate these targets."

Donghyuck's flames whizzed from his fingertips toward the wooden disks, but the moment they got close, the disks danced away from the fire. One of his flames hit the slowest disk, and with a flare of blue it burned to ash. The others were unscathed. Donghyuck's flames chased after the other disks. They got close. The disks danced away. They got close. The disks danced away.

Donghyuck clenched his other hand, and his flames moved faster. The disks moved faster too, but not fast enough, and they all went up in the same flare of blue.

"Now this one," Seo said. A clear ball formed in his hand and he let it float toward Donghyuck. As it floated, it grew larger and larger. Where it passed in front of Donghyuck, his face seemed to bend. Donghyuck sent his flames at the ball, but when they hit, they went up in a hiss of vapor. The ball might have been made of water, or some other clear liquid. Renjun couldn’t tell. The ball continued to grow larger.

Donghyuck threw more fire at it. All of it went up in vapor.

The ball grew larger than the size of Donghyuck's body, and then it enveloped him. Donghyuck floated into the ball, tumbling head over heels.

Professor Koon looked toward Seo, alarmed, but Seo's face was set.

Donghyuck moved his hands around the liquid, trying to maneuver himself around, but he couldn't swim his way out. The ball extended with each movement of his arms and legs. Bubbles escaped from his nostrils.

Donghyuck flexed his hands in the liquid. Nothing happened.

Renjun remembered he’d said his weakness was water.

Donghyuck closed his eyes and flexed his hands again. The liquid swirled by his hands and Renjun thought whatever he was doing was working, but it went still again.

A larger bubble escaped from Donghyuck's mouth. Renjun hadn't realized he'd stood up. Donghyuck's eyes snapped open in the water. His hands stopped flexing open and closed. They began to claw at the water. Renjun looked at Seo. Wasn’t it time to call it off? More bubbles escaped from Donghyuck’s mouth and nose. But Seo's face had the same stony set.

Donghyuck's nostrils flared, and his opened his mouth in a wordless cry. Renjun wanted to shout at him to keep his mouth closed, to keep the liquid out, but it was useless.

Donghyuck seemed to scream.

With a resounding hiss, the ball of water vaporized. A wave of heat washed over the audience, and those in the first few rows leaned back in their seats. Fire shot out from Donghyuck's body, curling around him like a great pair of wings. The wings extended out across the stage and singed the curtains. Donghyuck hovered there like an avenging angel, suspended by fire, the light of the flames dancing in his eyes.

Then the flames disappeared.

Donghyuck fell to the ground, coughing. His shirt had been burned through in a couple places.

"Thank you, Mr. Lee. That will be all," Professor Seo said.

The audience burst into applause. For once, Donghyuck couldn't seem to muster up the energy to play to the crowd. He got to his feet, swaying, and made his way off the stage without even a wave.

“Nicee," Mark said, when the applause died down. "I'm impressed."

"That was more than nice. That was insane. I didn't know Donghyuck could do that," Jaemin said. "Are Placements always like this?"

Jisung nodded, his mouth half-open. Even Jeno looked appropriately awed, and Renjun wasn't sure he'd ever seen the vampire impressed by anything.

"No, they're not," Renjun said quietly, but none of them seemed to hear him.

* * *

"How do you feel?" Renjun asked.

"Dead-tired," Donghyuck said. He had curled up on the couch, too tired to drag himself over to his own room and take a shower. He'd turned on the TV, but wasn't watching whatever played across its screen. "I hope I made attack magic."

"You better have. You almost drowned," Renjun snapped.

"Seo wouldn't have let me drown." That was true, but Renjun remembered the stony set of Seo's face and the bubbles escaping Donghyuck's mouth, and he felt angry all over again.

"He still shouldn't have done it."

"He was pushing me to show my full potential. It was worth it," Donghyuck said.

Renjun turned away. He wanted to argue, but he wasn't about to ruin Donghyuck's glow of satisfaction. Donghyuck deserved to have that.

Donghyuck wanted to help Renjun prep for his Placements, but Renjun didn't let him. Donghyuck didn't have the strength to argue. He slept for a full day on the couch, got up to eat a bowl of rice, brush his teeth, and shower, then slept again on his bed.

* * *

Waiting behind the stage was different from sitting at the front. The tension in the air was palpable, so thick it could have been cut with a knife.

Renjun should've felt like he had some advantage. He'd gotten to see Placements all of Thursday, so he had a good idea what each professor would ask. Donghyuck hadn't gotten that advantage. Probably intentional—all the highest ranked witches had been slotted in on Thursday.

It was a kindness, and kind of a slap in the face. A reminder that even if they knew what was coming, the lower ranked witches didn't have a chance of getting into advanced magic.

Knowing what was coming should've helped, but it didn't.

All the witches waiting to go up for Placements had been taken to a room near the back entrance to the stage. After they'd signed in, they could go wherever they liked in the building, as long as they came back to the room at least 5 minutes before their slot. Some of the witches rushed off to claim private rooms where they could practice. Others took seats in the room. Some sat in groups with their friends, while others sat off by themselves, watching the other witches with wary eyes. Renjun left the room after a while. He hadn't really been nervous until the night before, but now he felt stretched taut, a wire about to snap. The tension of the other witches in the room wasn't helping. Joowon had passed him earlier and said, "Don't pull a Junsu" and Renjun had almost clawed his eyes out. He'd stared at Joowon, thinking seriously about it for long enough that Joowon must have seen the murder in his eyes. Joowon had backed off fast after that, though he muttered a, "Fucking weirdo" as he left.

Renjun walked up the hall and up the stairs, then back down the stairs again. Up and down, up and down. His body was on loop, and so was his mind. He imagined bubbles and fire, bubbles in fire, bubbles of fire. Bubbles gurgling up through water, the hiss of fire and steam. Blood and thorns and roses that were black instead of red.

He checked the clock and almost yelped because it was over half past 9. He went back to the room.

He sat on the ground in a corner, his back to the wall. He put his head in his hands, regretting saying yes to Seo, and thought about how he'd gotten to this point.

"Renjun Huang," someone called, and he didn't remember moving his body, but suddenly he was behind them. He followed them out the door and through the back side of the stage. The curtains were closing.

"You're out in five," the person who'd brought him up said. He didn't register who they were. "Go stand there."

He walked dully over to the center of the stage behind the curtains, and waited. He checked the bindings around his arms. He'd wrapped them with cloth up to the wrist, hidden beneath his sleeves, and he hoped it would work as he'd practiced.

The curtains parted before him to bright lights. He felt half-blind, and squinted through the glow. The audience was less than a quarter full, to his relief. Movement caught his eye. Donghyuck, Jaemin, and Chenle sat front and center, waving at him. Next to them were Mark, and Jeno? It couldn't be. What was Jeno doing here?

He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. His hand tingled. He wrenched his gaze away from the audience. He couldn't afford to lose focus now.

The five professors sat facing him. Even though he was the one on an elevated stage, they felt larger than him.

"Renjun Huang, Rank 74 out of 74 students," the MC said. Professor Park's lips quirked upward as the MC said this, though announcing rank was part of protocol. "May the Placement commence."

Professor Park passed Renjun a small rubber ball, much like the one Professor Kim gave during her test, except it was blue instead of red. "Make this hover in the air for five seconds," he said. He smiled at Renjun, and patted him on the shoulder. It would've come off as encouragement to anyone watching, but Renjun knew better. When they'd done this assignment in class, Renjun's record had been three seconds.

Renjun smiled back at him. This was easy now. A small prick, and his magic welled up. The tricky part was directing it. He had to make it go to his forearm instead of his fingertips, and it didn't like being controlled. He breathed a sigh of relief when his magic didn't resist the direction; maybe the practice had helped.

The ball hovered in his hand. He let it go on for six seconds before letting it fall back into his palm. Park stared at him, and for a second Renjun thought he shouldn't have pushed his luck with that extra second, but Park's lips pressed into a thin line and he said nothing.

Professor Kim gave Renjun the red ball. Up close, she was more intimidating. She towered over him, and every detail of her appearance was done to meticulous perfection. "Make a barrier," she said. Renjun cut into his magic this time. He'd need a decent amount of it to make a barrier. He tried to envision it in his head, thinking of a wall forming, a wall falling into place around the ball. Perhaps the only part his magic got was the falling, because his magic fell like a heavy mallet onto the ball. It popped.

Professor Kim clicked her teeth, but did not say anything.

Professor Li stared sadly at one of his shirts before bringing it up to Renjun. It had a small hole in the side. Another prick, and Renjun's magic washed over it. He managed to meld together the hole. He got close to congratulating himself, until he realized this had the side effect of melding together the front and back of the shirt at the same time. Professor Li gathered up his shirt, looking sadder than before.

Renjun turned to Professor Koon. His heart began to beat faster in his chest. He'd screwed up two tests already, so a part of him thought, whatever, can't do worse than that. But he wanted her to like him. He didn't know why. Maybe it was because she'd watched each student with interest unlike the other professors. Even now she faced him with eagerness, leaning forward with a curious gleam in her eye, like she didn’t remember or care what rank he was. He wanted that to mean _something._

Her parakeet fished around in the drawstring bag and pulled out a paintbrush. Instead of dropping it into Koon's hand, the parakeet flapped its great wings and flew over the Renjun.

"Oh, he likes you," Koon said, clapping her hands. "That's rare."

Renjun extended a hand and took the brush from the bird, carefully avoiding its sharp beak. He tried to think what he could do with a paintbrush to impress Koon, but he couldn't think of much. He decided to stick to what he knew. Though he hadn't picked up a paintbrush since he'd come to the academy, and though he'd never painted with magic, the brush felt familiar in his hand. Comforting almost.

He made the deepest cut he had yet into his magic. Warmth expanded along his arm as his magic gathered. The warmth was all in areas covered by the bindings, so he was okay for now.

He raised the brush, and let the magic flow.

He moved his brush in the air, not quite sure what he was painting. The air in front of him was his canvas. There was half a picture in his head, a vague outline of a story and a place. None of the details were clear to him. Yet his hand moved in sure, strong strokes. As he painted he saw a boy in a forest, running. No, two boys, running away from something.

As the vision became clearer, his hand moved faster. His arm throbbed, but the pain felt distant, faraway.

The boys were going the wrong way. He had to warn them. His hand moved faster still.

If they kept going, they would meet a terrible fate, one worse than death. He was sure of it. It would be better if they turned back, and were swallowed by the forest.

The flow of his magic came to an abrupt stop, and the vision faded.

In front of him, his vision had been rendered in precise, beautiful detail in the air, down to the training squadron uniforms on the boys' bodies, and the gash on one of the boy's arms. The darkness of the forest felt so real he could almost feel the branches scratching against his skin, and even more than that he could feel a thicker darker darkness, pressing against him, calling their names. Or was it calling his name?

The paintbrush slipped from his hand, and clattered against the floor. His arm throbbed like mad.

Professor Koon ran up to the stage to retrieve her paintbrush. "This is beautiful—” She stopped by the image. Somehow Renjun knew that this close she saw what he saw, and she felt at least a hint of what he felt.

He couldn’t look away from the image in front of him, so he didn’t see her expression. He didn’t need to. He could feel her shock. Maybe he'd failed this test too. She walked back down the stage, the paintbrush tucked behind her ear. When she sat again, her thoughts seemed elsewhere.

The image began to fade. Renjun's arm continued to throb.

Renjun turned to Professor Seo, but Professor Seo made no requests.

"Thank you Mr. Huang." Professor Seo said. "That will be all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> exam ptsd anyone? yes, a whole chapter about tests. maybe this says something about me...
> 
> i don't know how this chapter got so long but i wanted to write both renjun's and donghyuck's tests so it kept getting longer and longer until i was like uhhhh should i cut things out? but i got too lazy to cut things so here it is *shrugs
> 
> i'll try to update around once a week! obvi a little late this time, but you know, starting from next week...
> 
> also please be careful and stay safe everyone, wherever you are


	11. evaluations

The curtains closed behind Renjun. He groped his way through the dark. He didn't know how he made his way down the stairs and back into the hallway connecting to the rest of the building. The rest of the building felt too bright in comparison, the lights blinding and blurring before his eyes.

His arm throbbed.

He passed faces that looked his way, unconcerned at his passing, tight with nerves for their own tests. He couldn't have told you who they were. They passed in the same blur as the lights. He thought he saw Joowon sneer at him and say something.

He didn't hear it. He didn't stop.

It didn't matter.

He stumbled down the hall, wanting to get away from all the people.

It had all been for nothing. He couldn't get the look of Professor Seo's face out of his head as he'd said Placements was over, unreadable aside from a touch of sympathy. But even if he couldn't read Seo's face, he knew what that was about. It was the same as always. He hadn't made the cut. He wasn't good enough to be a witch. It must have been so obvious Seo didn't even need to test him. Turned out that those sweet words Seo had said about believing in his potential were bullshit after all. Probably it was his fault for expecting them to be anything else.

His arm throbbed.

He wanted to be alone. He continued deeper into the building, away from the other students. They were his classmates, faces he knew well, but now their familiarity felt suffocating. Despite their nerves, they would pass. They weren't even afraid of failing Placements. They were afraid they wouldn't get into the advanced magic class of their choice.

Big deal.

And he was sure they'd know all about his test by the end of the day. He didn't want to see their faces then.

His feet took him up a flight of stairs, then another, to the top floor. Though it had been a year since, as if by memory he wound up in front of the study room that he and Donghyuck used to stake out in second year. The Placements hall was the building for most of the second year classes, and some of the mixed fourth year ones. Rooms too small to be classrooms had been designated as study rooms, usually complete with a bookshelf of magic books, one long wooden table and a couple chairs, and sometimes a magic-shielded section for magic practice. Most of the rooms with magic-shielding were taken by fourth years.

Renjun pushed open the door, and walked in. Like he'd expected, no one was there. The building had been cleared out for Placements, and even if it hadn't been, Renjun remembered that this room had rarely been used by anyone other than them in second year. By the amount of dust Renjun saw in the room, it hadn't been used much since. It had no area for magic practice, and it was one of the smallest study rooms. It had a table comfortable for two people and a squeeze for four, only three chairs, and a dusty small bookshelf with useless but entertaining texts like "101 Ways To Find Cavities—With Magic!"

Renjun closed the door behind him, and slid to the ground, with his back against the dusty side of the bookshelf. The ground was probably dusty too. He was probably covered in dust.

He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. They burned. He pressed until he felt the burning sensation go away, and took a deep breath.

It was fine. It was fine.

He rolled his sleeves up over his forearms and looked at the cloth bindings he'd wrapped up over both his arms.

His right arm continued to throb, and he saw that a dot of red had bled through the cloth. As he watched the dot began to expand, slowly but surely, growing more into the shape of an oval. He probably hadn't fixed the original bindings tight enough. A thought crossed his mind that he should retie them, but he didn't.

He watched the dot of red expand. Maybe he should shove this up in the professors' faces. Like look, I'm bleeding for this, please let me pass. Maybe that would work in a way his magic hadn’t.

He'd been so careful to layer and tie the bindings up well so that nothing would show. He laughed a little. What did it matter now?

He tore off the binding. He tore it off savagely, ripping at the tape that held it together. When he had unraveled it from his hand, he tossed it across the room. It landed on the dusty ground. Now he couldn't reuse it. Whatever.

The cut was deeper than he'd expected, a jagged line along the inside of his forearm. It wasn't deep enough to be a real concern, so he didn't bother to care. Blood dripped down to the crook of his elbow, and he felt savagely pleased with it.

The door creaked open, and Renjun lifted his head.

"What the hell is this?" Donghyuck said, standing in the doorway.

Renjun crossed his arms, though it was too late, and it didn't really hide the cut or the blood. He'd seen Donghyuck's eyes take it in anyway. "How'd you find me?" he asked. He already knew the answer. Donghyuck knew where to find him when he was like this. He always had.

Donghyuck didn't reply. He got over to Renjun’s side in two large strides and knelt beside him. Renjun could feel Donghyuck’s bewilderment. He might have felt sorry about it if it were some other time.

Donghyuck gripped Renjun's arms and pried them apart, none too gently.

"Hey, that hurts," Renjun said, but Donghyuck didn't let go.

He raised Renjun's right arm by his wrist and looked at the cut, surrounded by a couple smaller cuts, stark red against the paleness of Renjun's skin. He looked at the blood that had traveled down to Renjun's elbow. Then he looked at Renjun, and his eyes grew dark and angry.

"What the hell is this?" he hissed.

"The price of failure," Renjun said, half sing-song.

Donghyuck's grip on Renjun's wrist tightened. "This isn't funny."

"But it is. No one else has to bleed for their magic. I'm bleeding and I'm still going to fail. What a joke."

Donghyuck's eyes rounded, but the anger didn't abate. If anything, it grew. "Since when have you needed to bleed for magic?"

"Since the last project for Magic. Weren't you surprised that I managed to finish it? Don't pretend that you weren't. Maybe if you were paying attention, you would have noticed how my magic has gotten better over the past couple of weeks. Well, it's not like I expected you to notice. You had more important things to do," Renjun said, his voice still playful. It was unfair, accusing Donghyuck like this, when he knew how stressed Donghyuck had been over Placements. He still felt satisfied by the flicker of guilt on Donghyuck's face, because Donghyuck had been too busy and stressed to notice, and Renjun knew that.

"You didn't tell me," Donghyuck bit out, each word harsh with anger. It was an accusation of his own.

"I don't need to tell you," Renjun said.

Donghyuck recoiled. "You don't trust me." The words were again thrown like an accusation. If Renjun hadn't known Donghyuck as well as he did, he wouldn't have heard the undercurrent of hurt beneath the anger. Part of him didn’t want to hear it. He wanted Donghyuck to be angry with him, so he could be angry back. But he did hear the hurt. He remembered that Donghyuck had always been there for him.

Renjun peeled away Donghyuck's fingers from his wrist. "You know I trust you. I was going to tell you," Renjun said. “I swear I was,” he added, before Donghyuck could interject. "I thought it could wait until after Placements. You were so busy, and I didn’t want to distract you."

Donghyuck's anger started to fade. "I don't want you to wait to tell me something this important, even if I'm busy."

"It's not that important compared to Placements," Renjun said.

"Screw Placements, you're _bleeding,_ " Donghyuck said. "How did this happen anyway? Blood and magic don't mix, not usually. And any magic that does use blood always uses someone else's." And was strictly forbidden, not spoken about, and considered a Bad Thing, but Donghyuck didn't say that part.

"What does it matter? I'm going to fail anyway."

"You're not going to fail," Donghyuck said, but Renjun didn't think he sounded convinced.

Renjun laughed. "Seo didn't even give me a test. They don't do that. They always give a test. How could I not have failed?"

"I don't know why he didn't give you a test, but you were doing okay before that. Better than—”

"You stink of blood," another voice said. Both of them turned to the door. Jeno stood in the doorway. His pupils were partly dilated. Renjun thought he would call the look on Jeno’s face hunger.

Renjun tensed. He had forgotten about the vampires in the audience. What if they had been able to smell him?

Donghyuck reacted first. He moved so that his body blocked Renjun's from view. "I thought all of you vamps went home."

"They did. I followed you," Jeno said.

Donghyuck's eyes flashed. "Who said you could follow me? Why would you..." Donghyuck was too smart not to figure it out. His eyes darted between Renjun and Jeno. "Something happened," he muttered. "What else haven't you told me?"

"I couldn't tell if you were bleeding from the audience; it's too far from the stage," Jeno said to Renjun. Some of the tension eased out of Renjun’s shoulders. If Jeno hadn’t been able to tell, none of the other vampires would have known. "But I thought you might be." As Jeno spoke, he came closer to them. Donghyuck's fingers twitched behind his back, fire gathering in his hand. Renjun put a hand on Donghyuck's arm, stopping him.

Donghyuck turned back to him. "Why?"

Because he didn't want Donghyuck to get into trouble right before Placements came out. Because witches had to work together with vampires next year, and Donghyuck and Jeno would be good partners, and Renjun didn't want to be the reason that was ruined when he wouldn't be in the class anyway.

Because somehow Renjun wasn’t afraid of what Jeno could do.

Somehow, he didn’t care.

He didn't say any of that, just looked at Donghyuck. Donghyuck breathed out through his nose, and the fire in his hand went out. "Fine."

Jeno didn’t wait for their permission. Without hesitation, he knelt beside them and pulled Renjun's arm up, like Donghyuck had. Though unlike Donghyuck he was surprisingly gentle about it. Or maybe that shouldn't have been a surprise. From what Renjun had heard from Donghyuck and other witches, vampires knew how to handle those they fed on. That was part of what kept the prey coming back.

"This is deeper than last time," Jeno said. He frowned, but Renjun saw his pupils grow larger, his eyes on the blood.

Donghyuck mouthed, _Last time?_ He let it go, but from the way his eyes narrowed, Renjun knew he was going to have to do a lot of explaining later.

"Why do you care?" Renjun said. "Why were you at my Placements anyway? Did you like my blood so much that you couldn't help coming back for more?" His voice was thick with derision. That wasn't a smart way to speak to Jeno, but Renjun didn't care.

Jeno's eyes darkened, churning with an emotion that could only have been fury. Renjun felt a strange sense of satisfaction. He liked that he could make Jeno angry. He liked that despite how vampires were all high and mighty about their control over their emotions, he was this close to fracturing Jeno’s self-control.

He wanted more of it. He wanted to feel like he had power over something.

He leaned in closer to Jeno.

"Want some? Go on. That's what you came for, isn't it?"

"Renjun," Donghyuck said.

Jeno twitched at the scorn in Renjun's demeanor, at the careless way he waved his arm in front of Jeno. His eyes flicked toward the blood, some of it drying on Renjun's arm. A drop of it dripped on the floor.

Jeno's nostrils flared, but he didn't move toward Renjun's arm. Anger at Renjun’s contempt warred with other emotions on his face. He didn’t move away either.

Renjun thrust his arm in Jeno's face, and that movement broke Jeno's delicate self-control. Renjun saw the moment it broke, Jeno's fangs extending, his pupils blown out.

His hands clamped around Renjun's forearm, the pressure firm but not painful, and he drew Renjun's arm to his mouth. Renjun felt the soft warm wetness of Jeno's mouth, then two sharp stabs of pain that didn't last long before the pleasure hit.

Renjun let the pleasure course through him. It was easy to get lost in it, to want to get lost in it, to forget. He wanted to forget that he'd tried and that he'd failed. Wanted to forget that he wasn't supposed to let vampires bite him, for very good reasons. Wanted to sink into the blank numbness of a wave of endorphins, let it wash over him and drag him into the depths of its embrace where he'd feel nothing else. He wanted to feel nothing else.

He didn't know how long he let it go on, but eventually he forced himself to push Jeno away. It wasn't easy, and it wouldn't have worked if Jeno wasn't at least somewhat in control still. At first Jeno didn't feel him, focused on feeding. But the second time Renjun pushed at him, he stiffened, and he saw Renjun looking at him. He seemed to come back to his senses, and when he did he looked more angry than satisfied. He let go and put Renjun's arm down, the motions almost mechnical. His face had some color now, rather than its usual paleness.

Renjun folded his arms. The cut was healing as he moved. The speed was pretty impressive. Next to the cut there were now two spots of red.

Renjun moved over so that his face was closer to Jeno's. Jeno's eyes flicked to Renjun's lips, as if he thought Renjun was about to kiss him. Renjun almost laughed. Arrogant bastard. From what he'd seen of Jeno's usual encounters, he probably had a reason to expect that. Renjun leaned over by Jeno's ear. "Despite the way you act, you're no better than an animal," he said.

The next thing Renjun knew, he felt hard wood slam against his back. Jeno had him pressed against the bookshelf, his hands fists in Renjun's shirt. "Say that again," he said. The hunger was gone now, replaced by anger alone.

Donghyuck stood up behind Jeno, fire swirling in his hands again.

"You are. An. Animal," Renjun said. He should have been afraid, but he only felt the rush of adrenaline. He might have been smiling. "You have no control." Which didn't really make sense. From what he'd seen Jeno had great control over his emotions and his aura, more than most other vampires, but Renjun said whatever came to mind. He was surprised to see Jeno almost flinch.

"You're wrong," Jeno said. There was a strange vulnerability in his expression. A part of Renjun almost purred, seeing this.

Renjun stopped. Even with the lingering pleasure coursing in his veins, that feeling of satisfaction didn’t feel like him. He shouldn’t be so satisfied about seeing Jeno vulnerable, even though it was kind of what he had wanted—for Jeno to be the one coming undone before him rather than the other way around.

It didn’t feel like something he should want. His normal self didn’t want that.

His feeling of power began to fade, and with it any joy that had come with it. The room came back into focus. Though his arm no longer throbbed, he was tired, bloody, and not any less of a failure at Placements than he'd been a couple minutes ago. He'd made Jeno upset again, like he needed to add any more trouble to his life, and for no reason. And he didn't even feel _good_ about it.

Also, Donghyuck looked like he was about to get involved, and Renjun didn't want that, so he said, "I said too much. Sorry."

Jeno looked bewildered at the sudden apology, but he let go of Renjun and stepped back. The three of them looked at each other. Donghyuck let the flames in his hands die.

Renjun looked at his healing arm. "Thanks. For fixing this," he offered. He wasn't that sorry or that grateful, since Jeno had come to have some of his blood, and they all knew this, but he was grateful enough that the blood flow had stopped. And now that his grasp on logic had returned, he didn't want to stay on Jeno's bad side.

Jeno nodded, accepting the apology and the thanks, maybe because he felt pressured to. Donghyuck was glaring at both of them. Renjun felt momentarily relieved, if also annoyed. Because of course Jeno was not going to say "Thanks for letting me have your blood, Renjun" or anything like that. Because of course he didn't feel the need to be grateful about it.

After Jeno left, Donghyuck rounded on Renjun. "What the hell just happened? Tell me everything," he demanded.

Renjun told him everything. He'd been meaning to, and it felt good to get it all out in the open. He omitted the part where he pressured Mark into helping him. He had a feeling if Donghyuck knew about Mark's issues with some vampire with Asomateus, he'd never let Mark live it down.

* * *

Unlike Placements, the vampire evaluations were outdoors. They were held in a stadium with a circular patch of flat ground in the center, half the size of a football field, surrounded by seats that arched up the sides. It had the feeling of human football games, though Renjun hadn't been to any of those in person. Opportunistic students had organized to sell snacks, including treats for both vampires and witches, and they walked up and down the aisles, hawking their goods. Fried chicken wings sat side by side with little globules of blood. Renjun tried not to think about where they'd gotten those.

They even had a commentator, a vampire from one of the later years, who sat at bottom of the stands. He twirled a microphone in his fingers.

Lights lined the aisles so that they could find their way through the stands. Vampires didn't need those, but apparently they were prepared for a large number of witch spectators.

Different sections of the stands had divided into support for different vampires among the upper ranks, though the largest section in the center was neutral. Jaemin and Jeno each had a section. Renjun spotted Eunha and Joowon in Jeno's section, wearing scarves with his name stitched into them. Renjun shuddered. He wouldn't be caught dead wearing something like that.

Renjun headed toward the neutral section of seats, but Donghyuck pulled him toward Jaemin's section.

"We should support him," Donghyuck said. "He came to both of our Placements."

"I can support him without sitting there," Renjun said. "And I'm here to support Chenle. Jaemin is an afterthought."

After some back and forth they chose to sit on the edge of the neutral section, where it bordered Jaemin's section. Renjun eyed a pair of witches who were gushing about how amazing Jaemin was, how strong, how sexy, with unnecessary and unrealistic descriptions of his body, jawline, and personality. They must have seen his look of disgust, because one of them snapped, "What are you looking at?"

Renjun shook his head and turned away. Did they know how annoying Jaemin was?

Renjun shivered in his seat. He was wearing one of his thicker jackets, but it was December weather, and even the thick padding wasn't as much as he'd like. He hadn't been to vampire evaluations before. He knew they were outdoors, but he hadn't registered that outdoors meant cold.

Chenle hadn't asked him to come before, so he'd had no reason to go. Chenle hadn't asked this time either. It'd been Jaemin who had asked them both to come. He'd been excited about it. "It will be so fun. You get to see all the vampires of our year go head to head, and I can watch with you when I'm free!"

Renjun had not been convinced, but Chenle had said more quietly that he would like it if Renjun could come support, and that had gotten him to come.

Chenle and Jaemin had better be grateful, Renjun thought grumpily as a wind blew through the stands and he shivered again.

Donghyuck conjured up some flame in his left palm and Renjun huddled around it. Donghyuck had been smarter and worn two layers under his thick, puffy jacket.

"Hey, no magic in the stands," someone shouted from below.

"Damn," Donghyuck said. He closed his hand around the flame and put it out. Renjun watched it sadly.

* * *

Vampire evaluations were elimination style. Two vampires fought against each other until one was either down for a count of ten or chose to yield.

Donghyuck counted it off in his head. "Doesn't that mean there's almost 100 matches? How do they fit that into one day?"

Renjun shrugged. "Beats me."

Jaemin slid into the stands next to Donghyuck. "The first matches will go really fast. Most vampires will yield if they don't think they have a chance."

A rise of chatter came from the stands next to them. Renjun remembered they were next to Jaemin's fan section, and put his palm on his forehead. Great. Did Jaemin not notice how conspicuous he was?

Apparently he did, because he turned and waved one hand at his section. The chatter turned into gasps and a few screams. One boy stood up and said, "Oh my gods. Oh. My. Gods. He waved at me." The girl next to him, who looked like she was his girlfriend, said, "No, you bitch, he waved at me."

Jaemin blew air kisses at both of them.

Renjun covered his face with his hands. If anyone asked, he was going to say he didn't know Jaemin. And that yes, please keep him locked away somewhere for the good of all supernatural and non-supernatural creatures. He was not just a vampire, he was the worst kind of monster. A flirt.

"Aren't you supposed to be down there?" Renjun asked, when he could look at Jaemin again without his insides curdling.

"I'm not up for a while," Jaemin said, as if a horde of fans weren't watching him now with heart eyes. "When we get slotted in is by rank. Jeno and I will be going in once there's about 10 people left."

"Look, it's starting," Donghyuck said.

Two large lights turned at the sides of the stadium, and turned so that they covered the center grounds with a pale glow. The lights weren't over bright, but they were good enough to see by. The crowd continued to chatter as two vampires walked into the middle of the lit area. Renjun looked around. "Does no one pay attention?"

Jaemin yawned. "Like I said, the beginning's pretty boring."

The two vampires looked at each other and didn't move until one of them said, "I yield." The one who yielded walked back out, and the one who'd won stayed for the next contestant.

"Good display of aural pressure," the commentator said, sounding like he cared as little as the crowd.

"Why did he yield?" Donghyuck said, squinting at the grounds.

"The other one's aura was too strong," Jaemin said.

"Huh. Why do they choose to yield?" Donghyuck asked. "Doesn't that look bad?"

"Nah. Most vampires believe there's no point in a battle you can't win, so it's better to yield if you're sure you have no chance. If you fight and lose really badly, that looks worse."

Like that, the beginning matches went by as fast as Jaemin had said, with most of the vampires yielding a few seconds into the match. Some of them fought, and those got the attention of the crowd. Most of those matches were brief, one-hit knockouts. They were still enough to see the superhuman speed and strength of vampires. In one of the matches, a vampire slammed another's head into the ground. The crunch resounded around the stadium, and all of them winced.

"And that's a foul," the commentator said. "So both of them are out."

"It was a bad play," Jaemin said. "I don't think she meant to do that." Renjun was not reassured at all by the idea of the head slam being accidental.

For all his playfulness, Jaemin watched the matches with serious focus. He had an analytical eye, and when he spoke, Renjun could tell he was measuring up each of the vampires. He was almost too good at it. From only a few moves, he already had some idea of their strengths and weaknesses.

* * *

Chenle came out after the first twenty or so matches. Renjun waved and shot him a thumbs up, but he didn't think Chenle saw. Chenle didn't look at the crowd. He kept his eyes on his opponent.

His first opponent yielded to him.

"Not bad," Jaemin said. "He hasn't got much of an aura, but he's good at focusing it to create pressure."

His second opponent was a boy twice his size. When he saw that Chenle was his opponent, he looked obviously relieved. Then he smirked. He rushed at Chenle. Renjun didn't think someone so large and stocky could move so quickly, but one second he was across the field from Chenle, and the next he swung a punch where Chenle's head had been. Chenle ducked down, and the punch struck the wall. The wall caved in where the fist hit, creating a dent the size of someone's head.

"Clumsy," Jaemin said. "And slow. But he's got a lot of power. He's kind of a nasty one. I don't think he cares about getting fouled as long as he gets a good hit."

"That's slow?" Renjun said.

"Yeah, super slow," Donghyuck said, though he had just as much trouble following the movements as Renjun did. "Keep up with the program, Renjun."

The boy continued to swing at Chenle, and Chenle kept dodging out of the way just in time. But Renjun could tell Chenle's movements were getting slower, while the other boy's were not. The other boy could tell too, because his smirk grew.

"You better yield now, before I smash your head in," the other boy said.

"Intimidation tactics, how fun," the commentator said. "We'll see if Chenle returns the favor. No, nope, doesn't look like he's going to. He's too busy dodging."

Chenle tripped over something as he dodged the boy's next swing, and fell onto his back.

He scrambled to get back up, but he wasn't moving fast enough. The boy grinned and aimed a fist at his chest. Renjun's heart jumped. "Get up, Chenle," he shouted. Chenle had to roll over, move faster, do something.

Then Chenle disappeared. Where Chenle had been, a black raven stood. The boy's fist struck the ground, and he sprawled forward.

The raven became Chenle again.

He won the match with one well-placed foot in the crotch.

Jaemin clapped. "That was smart. A very fast and precisely timed shift. Good job, Chenle. Wasn't that exciting?"

"It was stressful," Renjun said. "I don't think I can watch many more of those."

Luckily, he didn't have to. Chenle yielded to his opponent in the third match.

* * *

After midnight, Jaemin left them to get ready. Renjun's eyes felt heavy, but the matches kept him awake. They'd become flashier as the night went on, and more brutal. The vampire leaving the grounds was injured more often than not. Sometimes a limb or two didn't look like they were bent the right way, and medical witches had to rush in to escort someone out.

Jaemin came out for the second to last match. The match moved so fast that Renjun almost couldn’t make sense of it. One second both vampires stood several meters away from each other, and the next, they were gone. Renjun belatedly caught a blur, but by the time he'd tracked that movement, they were moving again. Renjun saw the flash of an arm, or a leg. Someone was falling or being pulled, and a cloud of dust rose around the movements. When it cleared, Jaemin had his opponent pinned on the ground.

The section beside them erupted in cheers. Renjun cursed Donghyuck again for choosing to sit close to Jaemin's section.

The final match of the night was between Jaemin and Jeno. For the first time, the crowd went completely quiet.

Jaemin waved to the crowd, while Jeno ignored them.

The start was called, and the two of them leapt at each other. Renjun found it was easier to have some idea of what was going on if he didn't focus his eyes on exactly where he thought they were. He tried to take in the whole area of the fighting grounds, and let his eyes move with the blurs of motion. From what he could tell, they were fairly evenly matched. Jaemin had the edge on speed, but Jeno had more strength. He could jump faster and hit harder. There had to be something going on with their auras too, because there were moments when they'd look disorientated though nothing visible had happened.

Jaemin jabbed Jeno in the stomach. It stunned Jeno for long enough that he got in a kick at the side. He went for another kick, but Jeno caught his leg and flung him at the wall. Before Jaemin hit the wall, he flipped over in the air and landed crouched on his feet, then ran toward Jeno again.

As Jaemin ran, his arms dissolved into black bats, then his head, then his body and legs, until a swarm of bats flew in his place.

"I thought you said bats were old-fashioned," Donghyuck said to Chenle, who'd come to sit with them some time after his match.

"They are, but Jaemin does what he wants," Chenle said.

The bats surrounded Jeno. Jeno threw up his hands, protecting his face. A moment later, he dissolved too, into grey fog, or maybe smoke. The fog surrounded the bats.

The bats began to fall from the air. When they hit the ground, they faded into nothing. One by one they fell, until there was one left. It flapped bravely without its brethren, but its wingbeats become slower and slower. It sank in the air, hovering lower and lower, before its wings stopped moving. It tumbled to the ground. When it hit the ground, it transformed back to Jaemin.

Jaemin lay on the ground, coughing.

The commentator began to count, and the crowd chanted with him.

"10. 9. 8."

Jeno manifested from the air a distance away from Jaemin.

He looked up at the crowd. Jaemin began to push himself up.

"7. 6."

Jeno's eyes met Renjun's.

"5."

The chanting stopped. Jaemin had gotten to his feet. He ran at Jeno again, and Jeno didn't move. Jaemin threw him across the stadium.

* * *

Jeno saw Renjun sitting in the crowd above. He didn't know how his eyes had picked Renjun out from all the others around them.

When he saw Renjun, he felt hot and cold at once. He felt flashes of anger, remembering the curl in the witch’s lip as he’d almost played with Jeno. Calling him an animal. Calling him an animal like he wanted Jeno to be an animal. He’d tasted so good that Jeno had for one crazy second wanted to be one. Jeno had wanted to make him pay for that, and was going to, but Renjun had looked so conflicted after. Jeno didn’t understand him.

Now, Renjun just looked cold, and he was sitting in...Jaemin's section?

No, he was sitting next to Jaemin's section, with Chenle and his friend Donghyuck. Good, Jeno thought. But wait, why was that good? Jeno didn't know why he even noticed this. It didn't matter where Renjun sat. It would have been natural for Renjun to sit in Jaemin's section. He and Donghyuck were Jaemin's friends, after all.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jeno saw a movement.

Before he could react, he was flying. His back hit the wall of the stadium, and pain lanced through him. He collapsed on the ground, but he didn't have time to adjust to the pain.

He saw Jaemin coming this time.

He rolled to the side, barely dodging a kick that would have ended the match. He thrust his aura at Jaemin, as much of it as he could, full of soothing, sleepy emotion. It slowed Jaemin down, but Jaemin didn't falter. He was used to Jeno's aura.

It would have to do. Jeno used the time to get to his feet. Just in time, because Jaemin was on him again. Jaemin was relentless, a flurry of movement. Jeno didn't have the advantage in hand-to-hand combat, and Jaemin knew that. If Jeno didn't lash out with his aura at the right times to trip Jaemin up, he would lose. Usually he could keep it up as easily as Jaemin kept up his blows, but with his back aching, it was harder to focus the way he needed to.

He needed to end the match soon.

Jaemin's aura receded, almost to the point where Jeno couldn't feel it. He was trying to make it hard for Jeno to catch him coming. Jeno knew then that he was going for a finishing blow too. He wanted to finish it before Jeno recovered.

Jeno went for the opposite tactic. He pushed his aura everywhere, so that it seemed like he could come from any direction.

Both of them rushed at each other. As he got closer to Jaemin, Jeno made his aura thicker around Jaemin's ankle so that it seemed like he was going for an ankle sweep. He went for Jaemin's solar plexus instead.

He transformed half his other arm into smoke to blind Jaemin's eyes. It was hard to half-transform, not to mention move at the same time, but he could do it for a short time.

When Jaemin saw the smoke, he knew Jeno was going all-in too, and being a crazy bastard, he smiled.

Jaemin would probably expect a feint, but not where it would come from. Jeno usually went for the head, or the neck, so he was hoping that if Jaemin expected a feint he would be protecting the wrong area. But he underestimated Jaemin. Jaemin might not have known where the hit would come from, but he'd kept light on his feet so he could react the moment he had an indication of Jeno's presence.

Even with the smoke, this allowed Jaemin to move enough that Jeno missed. He still got Jaemin in the chest, but not where he'd wanted to hit. Despite the pain of the hit, obvious from the wince on Jaemin's face, Jaemin endured it well enough to knee Jeno.

The knee hit hard, straight to the ribcage. Jeno thought he felt a rib crack. He felt sharp pain shoot up his side.

That was it. He was going down.

He saw the look of victory on Jaemin's face as he took a step back, letting Jeno fall forward.

But Jeno wasn't going to go down without taking Jaemin with him.

Jeno slid a foot forward, catching himself instead of falling to the ground. With that spurt of momentum, he shot himself up and forward, ignoring the pain in his side telling him to stop.

His head slammed into Jaemin's jaw.

Jaemin reeled backward and dropped to the ground, just as Jeno fell himself. His rib screamed as he hit the ground.

The commentator and crowd began to chant again, though this time with more shock than fervor.

Jeno thought he should try to get up, but his body didn't feel much like responding. The thought passed. He hurt. The ground felt nice.

When the count hit zero, the commentator said, sounding extremely stunned, "For the first time in twenty years, we have a tie."

* * *

Both of them were carted off to the med ward. Even with the med witches’ healing abilities, and their own natural enhanced healing speed, Jaemin would be in for at least the rest of the night and the following day, and Jeno for probably another night after that.

Jeno had cracked one rib pretty badly and nicked another one.

They were put in the same room on beds next to each other. Jeno almost had a good laugh at Jaemin in a neck splint, but laughing hurt.

Both of them got sent boatloads of flowers and get-well cards, which the nurses carried in with increasingly frustrated expressions.

Jisung came by soon after they were settled in. He didn't have a lot to say, but the way he shook his head when he saw their state spoke volumes. He berated them as if they weren't the older, more experienced ones, and since they were bedridden they couldn't put him in his place like he deserved.

"You're idiots, you know that?" he said. "You don't have to actually try to kill each other at every evaluations. It's just a test." Jisung said this like he didn't take evaluations as seriously as they did. Jeno and Jaemin looked at each other. Jaemin raised an eyebrow. "One day one of you is going to succeed, probably by some accident caused by your own stupidity."

"Did he just say what I think he said?" Jaemin asked Jeno. He stuck a finger in his ear, pretending to dig around for earwax. "I thought I might have heard him call us idiots, but Jisung wouldn't do that, would he?"

"Yeah, you must be hearing wrong. Come over here Jisung. We can't hear you clearly," Jeno said.

"Yeah, come closer," Jaemin said.

Jisung stood safely away from their reaching fingertips. "You are idiots," he said.

"You're dead," Jeno shouted, as Jisung walked out of the room, looking pleased with himself.

When they were alone, Jaemin grew serious.

"What happened out there? You shouldn't have gotten hit by that," he said.

"I don't know. I got distracted."

Jaemin went quiet. "You got distracted in the middle of a fight?" he said.

Jeno didn't have a response.

"That's not like you, Jeno." Jaemin closed his eyes, quiet again for some time. "I thought you were giving me the fight. I would've hated you if you did. Tell me that wasn't it."

"You think I would do that?" he said. Jeno almost sat up before the pain in his side reminded him that he shouldn't. He couldn’t believe that Jaemin would even suggest that.

"No," Jaemin said. He couldn't turn his head but he fixed his eyes on Jeno. "But I needed to know. You don't get distracted, not like that."

Jeno wanted to sink into the bed. Jaemin was right. "I know. I don't know what happened."

"I don't know if it's Doyoung, or what, but you need to fix it." Jaemin spoke softly, not without sympathy, but he was firm. Jaemin was right again. Jeno couldn't be making rookie mistakes. If his classmates thought he was losing his edge, they'd be on him like hungry hyenas.

Donghyuck and Renjun came by in the morning. The latter looked like he'd been dragged in by force. Somehow Jaemin and Jeno were both awake, though Jaemin had started dozing off.

"You missed me already, huh?" Jaemin said, perking up halfway from his sleepy state.

"You know it," Donghyuck said, while Renjun said, "Get over yourself." Though he said that, Renjun added a get-well card to each of the tables. Even half-awake, with his hood pulled up over his head and his bangs messy, Renjun looked good. For a witch.

When he stepped by Jeno's table, Jeno thought he smelled good too. He always seemed to smell good.

"Just wanted to see how you both were doing. We're still on for Tuesday night, right?" Donghyuck said.

"On for what?" Jeno said.

"Visiting our friend in the med ward, remember?"

Jeno's eyes narrowed. "I thought you said I could go first."

"Well, you're not going to be up and about until Tuesday, and I don't recall you getting visiting rights, so."

Jeno bristled, but he couldn't deny it.

"And don't you want to see our friend?"

"My friend. And Jaemin's, kind of. Fine. But I do all the talking, okay?"

"Sure, sure," Donghyuck said, in a way that made Jeno sure the witch wasn't going to listen to him. He'd deal with that later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i suppose in a way this chapter is yet again more tests haha
> 
> actually managed to get out this update after a week! did not think that was going to happen so yay


	12. year's end

Renjun spent most of Monday in his bed. He did his laundry and pretended he couldn't understand Donghyuck when Donghyuck asked him if he wanted to practice magic together. Donghyuck had been trying to get him to do magic together since he saw Renjun bleeding. He wanted to see it in action. The only action Renjun wanted to take part in was the action of lying around and doing absolutely nothing.

Donghyuck and Renjun didn't talk about Placements, as if talking about them would ruin their chances.

At night, Chenle came over. All of them talked about the vampire evaluations. Even Donghyuck was impressed, and he'd seen the evaluations before.

"They definitely didn't go full out second year," Donghyuck said.

Chenle was pleased with his results. "Your final ranking is how far you get through the rounds," he said. Since he'd won two matches, he had moved up two places from his ranking in class. "Though the final ranking’s not out yet. Since Jeno and Jaemin went down at the same time, now they're figuring out how to decide which one of them should be first. It'll probably be Jeno because he's been first in class for most of the year, but they're pretty fussy about it. They keep coming up with new criteria, and last I heard they got stuck on transformations, like a whole debate if transforming into smoke is better than transforming into a bat. They answered that with a yes, and went on to asking if transforming into smoke is better than transforming into a couple hundred bats. Then there’s a whole other argument over if it should be based on their performance in class or only their performance in evaluations. No one really cares, and they're friends too, so I doubt they care, but some old-fashioned people won’t be happy with the school unless they've got a first and a second."

Renjun didn’t care much about that either, to say the least.

He praised Chenle until he got as close as a vampire could to blushing. Which was to say his face got paler than usual. Chenle was in such good spirits that he and Donghyuck got along without bickering for about 20 minutes.

It lasted until Donghyuck said, “My favorite part was the crow. A noisy creature, just like you.”

“It was a _raven,_ ” Chenle protested.

Donghyuck made cawing noises, and gracefully dodged the couch cushion Chenle threw at him.

When Renjun slept, boys in dark forests ran through his dreams.

* * *

Donghyuck was up bright and early Tuesday morning. Renjun hated him for it. He tried to throw his pillow at Donghyuck's face. It flew wide and hit his own lamp instead.

"Perks of being forced to get up early half the week. My body's wired for this now," Donghyuck said. He smiled too wide at Renjun's sleepiness. Renjun considered throwing his other pillow.

"You don't have to make me get up with you," Renjun said.

"Placement results are out. I've already let you sleep in an extra hour. You can't make me go see them alone," Donghyuck said.

Placement results. Right. Renjun tried not to let it show on his face how his stomach churned at the words. It was clear that Donghyuck wasn't going to let him drift back off to sleep, so he hauled himself out of bed. Donghyuck looked confident, but he kept walking around the house without doing anything much, and popping back in asking, “Are you ready yet?” every couple minutes.

While Renjun got ready, he told himself he was such a good friend. Donghyuck didn't deserve him, especially this perky morning Donghyuck that was about to get smacked in the head. No one deserved his 8am self. He ignored that Donghyuck wouldn't have let him go alone either. He ignored that really, he also didn't want to see his results alone.

His steps felt heavy as they meandered down the street onto campus, then down the pathway back to the Placements hall. They didn't talk much.

Renjun saw the scrolls posted on the side of the building from far away. There were five of them, each half the height of the building, hung from silver nails. A small group of witches stood by the scrolls, looking for their names. The bigger part of the class had probably already seen their results and gone home. The scrolls were posted at 7am, and many witches came right on time.

Renjun felt his steps slowing, and he forced himself to keep pace with Donghyuck. Whatever his fate was, he could handle it. He'd had three days to come to terms with repeating a year with Park. He tried to be optimistic about it. Now that he'd gotten a better handle on his magic, he could rub it in Park's face. See what Park thought about him then. But instead of Park's face, he kept imagining the stares of the witches of the year younger when they saw him walk in.

It'd be like the commentator at vampire evaluations. "A repeater! We haven't had one of those in twenty years!"

Donghyuck and Renjun walked over to the scrolls. Renjun followed Donghyuck's finger as Donghyuck looked for his name. Renjun would look for his own results after. He didn't want his morning to start with bad news.

As usual, Donghyuck ruined his plans.

"There you are," Donghyuck said. "Come on, look." Renjun groaned internally. He forced himself to follow Donghyuck's finger to five words written in dark ink. Better to get it over with.

"Renjun Huang," Renjun read.

He stopped.

He rubbed his eyes. Donghyuck turned to him, stunned.

"Renjun Huang - Advanced Creation Magic?" Renjun read.

“Advanced Creation Magic?” he repeated, unable to turn the phrase from a question into a statement. The chatter of the other students seemed to fade into the background, and he felt like he could hear only the whistling of wind through the trees. His heart soared.

Donghyuck's face broke into a smile. "Congrats, Renjun. And there you were, moping around because you thought you were going to fail. Downright stupid of you, obviously. This is why I’m the brains of this operation."

"There's no way," Renjun said to himself. He traced the words with his own finger. It felt like this was some prank, and the words would disappear once he stopped touching them. But he touched them, they were real, and after his finger left the parchment, they were still there. He had passed.

Not only had he passed, he'd made it into an advanced magic class.

"Yes!" Donghyuck shouted beside him, while Renjun continued to look at the scroll and blink stupidly. Donghyuck pumped his fist in the air. "I got into advanced attack magic."

"Of course you did," Renjun said.

"I know, I know. I am the best," Donghyuck said. "Thought about being humble for a second there, but I’m glad I have you to remind me it doesn't really suit me."

"I shouldn't have said that," Renjun said.

Donghyuck pulled Renjun into a bear hug. "We made it," he said fiercely. "We made it."

"We made it," Renjun echoed. _I made it._

* * *

Donghyuck, Renjun, and Chenle stood at the foot of the steps leading up to the main entrance of the med ward. Its glow reflected off their faces. The med ward was the only building lit up in an otherwise dark campus. School was over for the year, and even if it hadn't been, vampires didn't need light to see by.

Every now and then, a vampire walked past Donghyuck, Renjun, and Chenle. It wasn't only students at this time of year. Families had come to the academy to pick up their children, and some of those children were in the med ward. Enough vampires had been injured at evaluations that the head of the vampire professors had called it a bloody year.

Apparently, that was praise.

Vampires always had a kind of grace, but the adult ones moved with inhuman grace. A few of the adults transformed from various animals to human forms when they reached the steps, and kept walking without a break in step. Renjun wondered if that was what Jaemin, Jeno, Jisung, and Chenle would be like in ten years.

Would they have that sharpness and fluidity? Would any softness they had now be shaven off in lieu of cold beauty?

Would Renjun know right away that they weren’t human?

Most of the passerby acted like they didn’t notice the three of them. But one of the adults turned, looked Renjun in the eye, and smiled, showing off his fangs. Before Renjun could react, he walked away.

"Ready?" Donghyuck said.

Renjun looked at building in front of them, a fiery beacon in the night sky. Chenle shaded his eyes against the light. "As much as I'll ever be," he said.

They walked in through the doors and up to the receptionist's desk. The receptionist had over-bright eyes, and smiled at them so wide Renjun thought he might strain his jaw. Renjun saw a bottle of some energy drink on his desk.

"How may I help you?" he chirped.

"We're looking to visit Jaemin and Jeno," Donghyuck said, leaning against the desk.

"The three of you? A little late for witches, isn't it?" the receptionist said. He passed them a sign-in sheet. "Name, signature, and date."

"We're here late because of me," Chenle said, as they filled out the sheet. Donghyuck glared at him.

"Oh, huh? Yeah, that makes sense," the receptionist said. He took the sheet back and passed them wristbands, straps of brown leather with a stone inlaid in the center.

"What's this?" Donghyuck asked.

"Temporary security measure," the receptionist said with a yawn. "With all the parents here, we've got to be more careful." He lowered his voice. "Especially with all the vampires around. They have all these family rivalries apparently. Uncivilized old world stuff, but vampires, right? It's still our fault if one of the families gets around to hurting part of another family on our premises." He seemed to remember Chenle was there and stammered, "I don't mean you, of course."

"It's okay," Chenle said.

"The wristbands will let you in to the wing Jeno and Jaemin are in. That should be the one in the back, Wing 4. They're in room 403. Oh, but I guess you knew that already. Looks like you visited yesterday morning?"

"Yeah," Donghyuck said. He didn't sound fazed, but Renjun saw him drum his fingers against the top of the desk. "It only gives you access to one wing? Wow, they're pretty strict."

"Tell me about it," the receptionist said. "We spent all of Sunday night making sure to separate the vampires by family rivalries, not like we know anything about who hates who." This, Renjun thinks, is strictly a lie. The med witches and their fellow employees keep very close tabs on who hates who, generally speaking.

"I don't know how Ten got the info, but it's his fault if we put them in the wrong rooms. Then the superintendent said we had to configure these bands so that you can only get into one wing. I don't think we've had to do that before, so maybe the rivalries are getting worse? And after that they made me take an extra shift because someone called in sick. I bet he's not even sick..."

They left the receptionist fuming over his wayward coworker.

"What now?" Chenle asked as they walked down the hall.

"What now is you keep your mouth shut," Donghyuck hissed. "You didn't need to tell the receptionist why we're late. He didn't care—anyone could have told you that. If he's suspicious at all, it's because of you."

"Really? What about 'It only gives you access to one wing'? You don't think that sounded suspicious at all?"

"That was information we needed to know," Donghyuck snapped.

They reached the entrance to Wing 4. Where it used to be an open archway, now it was covered by a wall of wavering white light, translucent enough to see the hazy outlines of the corridor beyond.

Renjun placed a hand on the wall of light. It felt like a solid wall, though the light shifted in ripples around where his fingers touched its surface. Donghyuck placed his hand on the wall too.

"Damn it. They did a good job with this," he said, feeling across its surface.

On the side of the archway, a small brown slate had been attached. Above it was pasted a red paper with the messily scrawled words 'Touch Bracelet Here' and a hand-drawn arrow pointing down. Not anyone's finest work.

Renjun touched his bracelet to the slate, and the wall of light vanished. He walked through. The moment both his feet passed the boundary, the wall reappeared.

Donghyuck waved Chenle over. "Try walking over at the same time as me," he said. Donghyuck touched his bracelet to the slate. The wall vanished, and both Chenle and Donghyuck tried walking through. Donghyuck walked over the boundary without a problem, but a section of the wall of light appeared in front of only Chenle's body.

He walked into it headfirst.

Donghyuck snickered.

"You knew that was going to happen," Chenle said, rubbing his head.

"I didn't, but now we know," Donghyuck said. His amusement at Chenle disappeared, and he walked down the corridor, faster than before.

Chenle touched his bracelet to the door, and jogged to catch up to them.

* * *

Chenle was used to ignoring certain senses he had. Maybe if he had been paying better attention, he would have known.

They stopped outside room 403, and Chenle knew.

He was there.

Donghyuck pushed open the door without hesitation, so Chenle didn't have time to hesitate either. He filed in last, as if that would hide himself.

It wasn't like he could hide. In the room, there were only six of them. Though there were shadowy alcoves where he could temporarily blend in and hide himself, that didn't work on other vampires. It only worked on humans. Even then, he wasn't great at it.

He felt the presence pressing against the link in his mind. When they were in close proximity, even when Jisung wasn't trying to talk to him, he could feel Jisung around him. He wondered if Jisung felt the same way. He doubted it. Maybe his presence was small enough that Jisung felt nothing at all.

It wouldn't surprise him if only he was bothered by that thin, unbalanced link between them.

He really should break it off.

Jisung stood by the windows with Jaemin and Jeno, watching them. It took him a while to hide his surprise. When he was surprised he looked younger, and reminded Chenle uncomfortably of days they used to run around as children.

The pressure on the link increased, and Chenle let it open. He couldn't prevent it now.

Jisung's presence filled his mind. It felt familiar, and perhaps that was what disconcerted him the most. He expected to hear that touch of annoyance, the voice that demanded answers like it deserved it.

_What's going on? Why are you here?_

Chenle considered the cheeky response, 'Why are you here?' but discarded it. He didn't want to drag this on longer than he had to. He couldn't not notice the concern in Jisung's mindvoice, and it was surprisingly easy for him to misinterpret it as concern for him rather than concern for the situation or for Jaemin and Jeno. He was familiar with misinterpreting Jisung.

Chenle sent over the mental image of Doyoung.

He felt Jisung's shock, and ignored the other feelings coming across the link. It was easier to dislike Jisung when he couldn't feel so much of him.

"Without me?" Jisung said, and even if Chenle had tried to ignore the feelings from the link, he could hear the hurt in Jisung's voice. The emotions from the link amplified it too much.

_Too many people would be suspicious_ , he responded weakly.

Chenle already knew Jisung didn't believe him. Though Jisung's accusation had been at them all, he watched Chenle alone. _You don't want—_

Chenle shut the link off before Jisung could finish his sentence.

* * *

Donghyuck took the seat by Jaemin's empty bed.

"Hey, that's my seat," Jisung said.

Donghyuck raised an eyebrow at Jisung. “Not anymore.” He crossed his legs. "We have a problem," he said.

"Am I the problem?" Jisung said. He tried to sound angry, but he was bad enough at hiding his hurt that he came off as petulant. Not very vampiric, Renjun thought. Were younger vampires all like this? Jeno and Jaemin looked distressed. Surprisingly, Chenle seemed uncomfortable too. Renjun thought he would've liked to see Jisung in distress.

Donghyuck gave Jisung a once over. "You're the least of my worries," he said. This seemed to make Jisung sulkier.

Donghyuck tapped the bracelet around his wrist. "They've cordoned off the different wings of the med ward. You can't get into a wing without the right bracelet. Doyoung is in Wing 5."

Jeno shrugged. "So that's it then."

"I didn't take you for someone who gives up that easily," Donghyuck said. Renjun felt a flare of anger in Jeno's aura, though his expression didn't change.

"So both of you are all better now?" Donghyuck asked.

Jaemin stretched one arm across his chest. "Good as new," he said.

"Why are you still here?" Renjun asked. "I thought you were supposed to get out this morning or yesterday?"

Jaemin grimaced. "My parents dropped by. They thought it'd be better if I stayed a little longer."

"Their exact words were, 'Look at those bruises. How can I let my baby leave until he's all better?'" Jeno said.

Jaemin elbowed him.

"And after that they congratulated Jeno on making the bruises, and said I should have been better about my defense. The hypocrisy!"

"It's good to hear that you're better, but my real question is, are the nurses still checking in on you?"

* * *

The nurse came in hours after midnight, at least 10 minutes later than Jeno and Jaemin had predicted. Renjun's legs were cramping. He was pressed against a tangle of elbows and knees that he wasn't sure was Jisung, Donghyuck, Chenle, or a combination thereof, and the storage closet was not made for four.

"What's going on out there?" Donghyuck whispered.

"Shut up. And get your leg out of my face," Renjun said. "I can't see."

"Pretty sure that's a mop, not my leg."

"Nope, sorry, that's my arm," Chenle said.

Renjun put his eye against the crack of the storage closet door, ignoring Chenle's attempt at muffling a groan of pain. It was hard to see the nurse from this angle.

She wasn’t a true nurse, which was better for them. She was one of the med witches in training, like Ten, who did nurse or doctor duties depending on the day. Though Ten somehow got the same respect as full med witches.

"Can you come closer?" he heard Jeno say. Renjun winced. What kind of question was that?

At least Jaemin was quick on the uptake. Before the nurse could respond, he said loudly, "My neck still hurts."

The nurse went over to him. "Where?" the nurse asked.

"Over here," Jaemin said.

"I don't remember you being injured there..." The nurse's voice trailed off. Renjun felt Jaemin do something with his aura, almost like he was twisting it around her. Renjun saw her body still.

Jaemin raised a thumbs up.

Renjun and the others burst out of the closet, tumbling together into a heap on the ground. Jisung and Donghyuck were back on their feet first. Renjun got up more slowly. He tried to beat some feeling back into his legs.

The nurse stood by Jaemin's bed, looking straight forward. Her eyes were blank.

Donghyuck waved a hand in front of her face, careful not to cover her eyes. "I didn't know hypnosis works this well."

"Jaemin's good at it," Jisung said.

"Not that good," Jaemin said through gritted teeth. His eyes were locked with the nurse's, and his forehead was creased with the effort. "Lucky part is she doesn't have much of a defense against it. I can give you half an hour. Maybe a full hour at most."

"I can help with that," Jisung piped up. "So can Chenle."

Chenle looked like he would rather do anything else, but he didn't argue.

"You can do hypnosis?" Renjun asked Chenle. He'd thought it was a difficult skill for vampires.

"One of the few skills I somehow manage to pull off," Chenle said. "Definitely can't hold it for half an hour though. It's harder with witches than humans—the magic probably gets in the way."

"Between the three of us, we'll get you an hour," Jisung said.

"Overconfident as always," Chenle muttered, but he didn't contradict the timing.

As Donghyuck had expected, the nurse had a band around her wrist too, but the stone in the center was larger and a different color, pale blue rather than grey.

They took the band, and rushed out the door.

When they didn't see anyone, they ran down the corridor. Donghyuck led the way. He hadn't brought his map, but he seemed to have the directions memorized. Instead of heading back to the central pentagon of the building, they went down a side route and up the stairs to the top floor. Each of the wings was connected to the adjacent wings by a narrow passageway that ran from the center of the top floor of one wing to the next. This was a route only taken by the med witches.

A wall of the same translucent light covered the entrance to the passageway. There was no slate on its side, but Donghyuck didn't stop in front of it. He kept walking and passed right through without using the bracelet. Jeno ran in after him. Renjun took a breath, and followed them.

"As I thought. They only keep you out, not in," Donghyuck said.

They moved down the passageway, crouched low so that they wouldn't be seen through the windows. The moonlight cast their shadows long against the ground.

Renjun's heart hammered in his chest. If any of the med witches walked into the passageway now, they had nowhere to hide. The passageway felt like it stretched on and on. Was Doyoung even awake? He was a vampire, so probably. But Renjun didn’t like thinking that it could all be for nothing.

They reached the other side of the passageway. Another translucent light wall was all that stood between them and Wing 5. A slate hung by the side, but Renjun realized much too late that they had one bracelet between the three of them.

He didn't have time to point it out. Donghyuck tapped the nurse's band against the slate, the wall disappeared, and he walked through. The wall closed up again behind him.

Jeno stared at the wall, open-mouthed. "He's leaving us behind?" he said.

A hand reached back in through the wall, holding the bracelet. "Don't be so melodramatic," Donghyuck said. Renjun breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn't expected Donghyuck to actually leave them behind, but he wouldn't put it past him either.

Jeno took the bracelet from Donghyuck and passed through next. He passed it back to Renjun, and Renjun followed them.

"Nice trick, right?" Donghyuck said with a grin.

"You could have told us you were going to do that," Jeno said.

"No time, sweetie," Donghyuck said, grinning wider.

"Don't call me sweetie."

"Sure thing, sweetie."

They made it to Doyoung's room without encountering another soul. The door wasn't locked. As Donghyuck slid it open, Renjun thought that it had been almost too easy.

Keyword: almost.

"Donghyuck? What are you doing here?" a voice Renjun recognized too well snapped.

As soon as Ten spoke, Donghyuck tossed the nurse's bracelet behind him. Renjun was grateful for Jeno's fast reflexes. He caught it while Renjun was still frozen, and started to drag Renjun away. Renjun's body caught up to his mind, and the two of them dashed over behind the corner. They made it just in time.

Ten stepped out into the corridor. Renjun was always amazed how someone so small could exude so much menace. As usual he questioned why Ten hadn't continued with attack magic.

"I would ask you to explain, but I don't need to hear whatever excuses you're thinking of right now."

"I just missed you, Ten—”

"I said I don't want to hear it."

Donghyuck gulped and went quiet. Renjun covered his mouth to keep a laugh from coming out. Jeno looked at him like he was crazy, but he wouldn’t understand. It wasn't often that Renjun saw Donghyuck cowed to any degree by another witch.

Ten rolled his eyes. "I know why you're here, you troublemaker. You were there when they found Doyoung, and as usual you can't keep your nose out of anything. I'm going to tell you this once. Keep out of it this time. This isn't something to satisfy your curiosity. It's serious."

"I know it's serious," Donghyuck said. "That's why I want to know what's going on."

Ten rubbed the back of his neck. His glasses hid his eyes. Renjun realized how late it was, and that it meant Ten must have been working around the clock. "I mean, I get it. We all want to know what's going on."

"So you'll let me off?" Donghyuck tried, hopefully.

"No, you and I are going to have a friendly chat with the hospital superintendent."

Donghyuck moaned. "Aren't we friends Ten?"

"You're a hundred years too early to be friends with me, cheeky brat," Ten said. "But for your trouble, I'll tell you something. Doyoung will be released soon, and you can talk to him all you want then, if he's willing to talk to you. You're not going to get much from him. No one has been able to."

With those ominous words, Ten turned on his heel and started down the corridor. Donghyuck followed, looking contrite, but when Ten's back was turned he winked in the direction of Jeno and Renjun.

Renjun waited until he could no longer hear footsteps. Then he waited until Jeno could no longer hear footsteps.

They went back to Doyoung's room, and pushed open the door.

Doyoung lay on the bed. Renjun hadn't seen him since that day in the forest. He was startlingly alive. As much as a vampire could be, anyway. Renjun didn't know why he would have expected otherwise—the med ward had a reputation for a reason—but the image of the man lying bloody on the ground didn't match up right away with the vampire in front of him. There was no blood, no sign of injury at all. Doyoung's aura felt normal. It was not the stark emptiness of when it'd been surrounded by the cage, and not the dull pulse of when Renjun had so carelessly removed the cage. It felt healthy. A little frenetic maybe, but that could have been Doyoung's personality or the fact that he'd been cooped up for the past several weeks.

To Renjun's relief, Doyoung was awake.

He turned when he heard them open the door. Doyoung's face had a softer cast than Jeno's, and it took some time for Renjun to remember that they were related. They didn't look alike.

They were both gorgeous, but that was beside the point. It wasn't like you could find a vampire who wasn't gorgeous.

When Jeno looked at Doyoung, he seemed to soften too. He didn't regard his brother with indifference, anger, or the aloofness Renjun was used to seeing on him. There was a very unvampiric expression of concern and tenderness on his face. It made Renjun feel like they were more similar than he thought. He turned his attention back to Doyoung. He wasn't sure Jeno would want Renjun to see him like that. He wasn't sure he wanted to see Jeno like that.

"Jeno, it's good to see you," Doyoung said. He didn't bother to conceal his surprise. That openness in emotions was unusual for a vampire, but they were family. Maybe he didn't feel the need to.

"You look good," Jeno said.

Doyoung smiled. "They said I'll be out by the end of the week. I'm all recovered now, don't worry. They just have to run some tests, and get an ok once the results are out."

Jeno's shoulders sagged with relief. "That's...that's really good," he said.

Doyoung glanced at Renjun. "Who is that?"

"He's Renjun. He’s the witch who found you, when you were hurt..."

Doyoung's eyes focused on Renjun, as if seeing him for the first time. "You found me?"

"Yeah, Chenle and I did," Renjun said. He felt like shrinking under the vampire's scrutiny, but he didn't let it show. He didn't know why Doyoung was staring at him so intently.

"I should thank you then," Doyoung said. "It's because of you that I'm alive."

The words felt more like a burden than praise. Renjun didn't deserve to be told that. "I didn't do much," Renjun said.

"It's good to see you have witch friends now, Jeno," Doyoung said.

"I wouldn't call us—”

"Yeah, we've been friends since he found you," Jeno said.

Renjun looked at Jeno incredulously. Who was he trying to fool? He held his tongue, not eager to argue in front of Doyoung.

Jeno continued, “Brother, I didn't want to ask you before, but now that you’re better, what happened before you were found? How did you get hurt like that? Who hurt you?"

Doyoung looked out the window.

"I don't remember," he said. "I should remember, but there's a blank where my memories should be. It’s as if someone's taken them from my mind." Doyoung clenched his hands in fists, unclenched them, and stared at his empty palms. "I wish I could remember. That's all I've been trying to do while I've been here. Day after day I try to remember, and day after day there’s nothing."

Jeno looked torn by the helpless frustration on Doyoung's face, so Renjun spoke instead. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Doyoung looked at Renjun as if he'd forgotten he was there.

"We were sent to look for the missing pairs. Jae—" Doyoung choked a little bit. "Jaehyun had gotten a clue. There was a part of the perimeter...I can't remember where...and we'd gotten into the forest. We were hunting down whatever had gotten them, I think..."

An image flashed in Renjun's mind of boys running through dark forests.

"What happened to Jaehyun?" Renjun asked in a soft voice. He didn't want to say it louder.

The intensity of Doyoung's stare made Renjun want to squirm.

"I don't remember."

Doyoung's expression didn't change, and his eyes didn't shift from Renjun's face, but when he spoke he sounded so empty that Renjun was afraid. He held Doyoung's gaze without blinking. He was afraid that if he blinked, when he opened his eyes again he would look at Doyoung and see nothing but the great emptiness he heard in his voice, spreading on and on.

"I can't feel him anymore," Doyoung said, almost too quiet to be heard. Every hair on the back of Renjun’s neck stood up.

They had to leave then. The deadline Jisung had given them was almost up. Renjun thought he felt the heat of Doyoung's gaze lingering on him as they left, but when he last looked back, Doyoung had turned back toward the window.

They didn't run into anyone on their way back. It was good that Jeno had memorized Donghyuck's steps, because Renjun didn't know where they were going.

They walked through the hallways with only their shadows for company.

Though they should have hurried, they didn't run. The emptiness in Doyoung's voice seemed to echo in each step Renjun took.

When they reached the passageway, Jeno stopped in front of him. Jeno’s shadow spilled out in front of him, more than two times his height. "Why did you bring up Jaehyun?" Jeno accused.

Though he didn't raise his voice, Jeno's anger was clear, and his worry. It was written in the set of his shoulders, the curve of his mouth, the crease of his brow. Even with his face half-lit by moonlight, Renjun thought that Jeno had never looked so...human.

Jeno faltered when he saw Renjun's expression. Renjun didn't know what he looked like. Was Jeno afraid of that emptiness as much as he was?

"I'm sorry," Renjun said.

Was that what it meant to have a pair?

Jeno turned and stepped through the light into the passageway. They went through the passageway back to Wing 4 in silence. Renjun hoped that Donghyuck wasn't having too hard of a time with the superintendent.

A short while later, Jeno asked, "Why did you call me an animal? That time."

Maybe it was weird to know what time he was talking about right away, but Renjun did. He hadn't forgotten that time either. He tried to play it off. "It was a slip of the tongue." _Because you are one. Because vampires are._

"It sounded like you meant it." Jeno's tone grew accusatory again, like Renjun had done something wrong to him. Renjun didn’t appreciate that.

Renjun tried again. "I didn't mean it."

"You're lying," Jeno said. Was Jeno really not going to drop it? Renjun was willing to forget the past; sometimes he wanted to. But if Jeno wasn't going to let it go, he was too tired to keep mincing his words. "I'm not an animal," Jeno insisted.

Renjun drew himself up to his full height. This was sadly shorter than Jeno. "Then don't act like one," he said.

"When have I acted like one?"

"Maybe when you came to find me for blood after Placements? Or that time in the bathroom?"

"I helped you out."

"That's self-satisfaction. I didn't ask for your help. Maybe you can justify it to yourself as helping me out, and sure, great, it's nice to stop the bleeding, but don't act like you weren't there just for the blood." Jeno took a step back, and Renjun knew he'd hit the mark.

"The last time, you offered it to me!"

"Okay, then we can both be animals. Does that make you happy?"

"What? No. What's your problem with me?"

"I don't have a problem with you. You're the one who _threw me against a wall_ the first time we met."

Jeno blinked.

"You don't remember, do you?"

"I remember you challenging me," Jeno said weakly.

"Maybe you can jog your memory then. I remember. Since you've helped me and hurt me and gotten some blood out of it, let's call it even? I won't call you an animal, and you can ignore me like you've always done before."

"Renjun, that's not fair."

"The others are waiting," Renjun said, and walked on, not looking back to see if Jeno followed him.

When they got back to the room, Jisung and Chenle were panting, and Jaemin had a sheen of sweat across his forehead. The relief on their faces when they saw Jeno and Renjun was palpable. Renjun strapped the band back around the nurse’s wrist.

Renjun got into the storage closet for the second time of the night, followed by Jisung and Chenle. As Chenle's elbow pressed into his back, he wondered how his life had gotten to this point. The corner of the closet dug into his knee.

Jaemin released the nurse from the hypnosis. She jerked back into motion. She did a perfunctory check of Jaemin and Jeno’s condition, pronounced them fully recovered, and walked out in a daze. She didn’t seem to notice that Jaemin was short of breath.

After they got out of the closet, no more gracefully than the last time, Renjun asked Jaemin, "Is she going to notice an hour passed?"

"Yes, but she'll probably think she was checking up on something for me."

"You mean that hypnosis can change someone's memories?" Renjun asked. Jeno looked at him sharply.

"No, nothing dramatic like that. But the mind is great at filling in the blanks. The mind is also great at figuring out it's being messed with, so hypnosis gets less and less effective every time it's used."

If the mind was so great at filling in the blanks, Renjun thought, why could Doyoung remember nothing?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> annnndd that's a wrap for third year


	13. the dreamer's interlude

Jeno fumed. He fumed because when he wasn't angry he felt troubled. It was easier being mad.

It was easy to be mad.

_I won't call you an animal, and you can leave me alone like you've always done before._

Renjun acted like Jeno had wronged him, when he was the one who had pushed his arm in Jeno's face, when he was the one who had demanded that Jeno take a taste. Why was it Jeno's fault that he'd agreed? And if Renjun wouldn’t have done that if he didn't like it the first time, right?

Right, thinking back on it, Renjun had been the one who tried to get his attention in the first place at the party. He was the one who hadn’t left Jeno alone.

So Jeno might have roughed him up a little bit in the heat of the moment, but he hadn't thrown him that hard, had he? Those details couldn’t have been important.

Jeno remembered Renjun's face in the med ward, half-lit in the moonlight, his expression a closed door. Even though, at night, with both their emotions riding high, Jeno should have had no trouble reading him.

Something about him didn’t make sense, beyond being able to feel auras and bleeding for his magic.

Jeno tried to think about something else, but transitioning between thoughts left him dangerously close to thinking about nothing at all. When his head emptied, he was left with the image of Doyoung floating across his mind. Healed, but not whole.

Jeno’s temper flared. Renjun had made Doyoung look like _that_. Like he had been hollowed out, not by demon magic, but by a pain Jeno couldn’t understand. Like something inside Doyoung was close to gone, and each time he was forced into awareness of it, he lost a bit more of whatever was left. 

Jeno’d had every right to be angry that night. How had Renjun turned it around on him?

Jaemin poked a head through his door, and made a face. He could feel Jeno's aura. "Okay, someone's in a mood," he said. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing. Leave me alone," Jeno said.

Jaemin leaned his head against the doorway. "Something happened that night you went to see Doyoung."

"Something happened like me finding out my brother is missing a whole chunk of memories. Why shouldn't I be upset? It's not like we're humans. That doesn't happen."

Jaemin stayed in the doorway. "We don't know what can happen when there's demons involved. You knew he might have...forgotten some things. The professors warned us about it."

"I didn't think it would be that bad."

Jaemin took a step into Jeno's room, and sat down on the ground, his back against the wall. "This doesn't feel like you being upset about Doyoung. You've been more upset about that for weeks so I know what that feels like. There's something else."

"There's nothing else." Jaemin crossed his arms, and waited.

At last, Jeno said, "I had some of Renjun's blood."

Jaemin choked a little. "What?" he said.

* * *

It was the same dream as before. Renjun walked through the forest. This was the slow dream. The fast dream was the one with running and fear, though he was never sure whose fear it was. The fast dream was the one he hadn't had for a long time, almost since childhood perhaps, but had started to have again this past month. He could never remember much of the details.

Just running. And fear.

He didn't like the fast dream.

The slow dream was different. He'd always had the slow dream now and again. It was comforting, in a way.

He wandered the forest alone. There was darkness here too, but it was the friendly kind. Not the kind that would eat him up, but the kind that wrapped around him like a well-used blanket, promising safety he knew wasn't quite as secure as it seemed—like when a child pretends what he can't see doesn't exist.

Sometimes he saw animals in the distance. If he called, they would come to him, and occasionally follow him for a while, their eyes filled with human intelligence.

Some paused just long enough to look at him, while some walked by his side most of the journey.

When he reached the lake he was always alone.

The lake was like a mirror, too still and reflective to be real outside of a dream, but he knew if he touched the water he would send ripples through it. He walked to the edge of the lake.

He bent his head down to see his reflection, and his eyes met their mirror in the water.

He saw a glimpse of orange-yellow, nothing distinct, before he felt the pulling sensation. The landscape vanished from him in a blur.

He never had enough time to make out the shape of the eyes, but he knew.

The eyes in the water weren't his.

Then he was awake. He woke at this part each time. It almost felt like a ritual, looking into the water at the eyes that weren't his. He never saw his full reflection.

* * *

Renjun twisted a loose thread on his sweater between his fingers. The six of them had gathered up again at his apartment. It had been small for five of them, and now felt positively claustrophobic with six.

Renjun sat on the ground cross-legged in front of the coffee table, so at least he wasn't wedged between the others like last time.

The atmosphere wasn't great. To say it was uncomfortable would have been an understatement.

Chenle sat as far away from Jisung as he could without being outside the circle of conversation. Chenle had told Renjun he was like Jisung's lackey, but it didn't look that way. Jisung kept looking at the space between them like he'd noticed it for the first time, and maybe he had. They didn't spend much time together usually.

Earlier, Jeno had decided to ignore everything Renjun had said to him about leaving him alone, which, really, was it so hard? And had in front of everyone pulled him aside. Donghyuck had raised an eyebrow, the question easy enough for Renjun to understand. _Do you want me to come with?_ Renjun waved him off. He was in his own apartment, his home court. He could handle Jeno here. He had to be able to, or he wouldn't be able to handle Jeno anywhere. Though if he were honest with himself, he wasn't sure he didn’t need the backup. And if he were more honest, he needed the validation of proving himself wrong.

Jaemin watched as Jeno pulled Renjun away, his expression unreadable.

They moved into the kitchen, and stopped in front of the kitchen counter, a little out of sight from the others. Renjun heard Donghyuck say something to Jaemin in the background.

Jeno had his schoolboy look on today. He dressed simply in a white t-shirt and black jeans. His black as night hair covered his forehead, each strand perfectly in place. Renjun wasn't sure if vampires just woke up with their hair perfect. If they did, Chenle was an exception to that rule. Jeno's hair was darker than Renjun's own, which was really more of a dark brown than true black.

Jeno had on a pair of glasses with black rims on the top, different from the ones he had before. Renjun wondered idly how many pairs of glasses he had.

"Are those real?" he blurted out.

Jeno's eyes widened momentarily behind the glasses, startled. "Yeah." He squinted at Renjun suspiciously. "Why wouldn't they be?"

"I didn't know vampires could have bad vision," Renjun said.

Jeno took off his glasses and held them out to Renjun, and Renjun took them. He almost didn't notice the way Jeno's fingers brushed against his when he passed them over. Jeno didn't seem to notice, and Renjun hoped he hadn't felt Renjun's fingers freeze up for the slightest fraction of a second. Renjun squinted through the frames. "Whoa you do have bad vision," he said, his brain always a second too slow to be diplomatic.

Jeno's bottom lip pushed out just slightly. He seemed almost sulky, but that couldn’t be right. "It's not that bad. My vision's better at night. I rely more on my other senses anyway."

Did he even sound sulky?

Talking like this, it felt like an everyday conversation between acquaintances. No magic, no blood, and no tension between them. Nothing to gain or lose besides the placid satisfaction of unimportant questions and equally unimportant answers.

The illusion lasted until Jeno sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He looked to the side, not meeting Renjun's eyes. When he spoke again, it was half through gritted teeth. "I wanted to say..." He didn't sound like he wanted to say anything.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry about..."

Renjun startled. The last thing he expected was an apology.

Jeno heaved another sigh. "I wanted to say I'm sorry about hurting you at that party."

Renjun studied him. Jeno didn’t look sorry. He looked pained. "Um, okay. Thanks for that,” Renjun said.

Jeno's eyes flashed to his then. "So say you're sorry too."

"What?"

Jeno held his gaze.

"What should I be sorry for?"

"For tempting me with your blood and then acting like I'm the one at fault." Jeno lowered his voice like he was making a confession. "That bothered me."

Renjun bristled. "I wasn't 'tempting' you. It's gross that you'd even think that."

With some effort Renjun ignored the flicker of hurt that passed over Jeno's face. Maybe Jeno was used to being told he was all that by everyone around, but Renjun wasn't going to be one of the sycophants.

Jeno said, "You're lying. You wanted—”

"Don't tell me what I want or don't want. You don't know me," Renjun said. He took a step forward, ignoring every instinct in his body telling him it wasn't a good idea, closing the gap between him and Jeno. In a soft voice, he said, "Jeno, I don't know what you think of me, but I'm not responsible for your actions. I'm not going to apologize for them. I'm not going to apologize for tempting you, because I wasn't trying to. If it's hard for you to be so 'tempted', the solution for that is simple, like I said. You can just leave me alone."

Jeno actually sputtered. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"We, well, we're going to be in the same class next year, and you're Jaemin's friend now." Renjun cursed Jaemin in his head again. He found that happened a lot. "It's more trouble to try to avoid you."

"I can do the avoiding, if that's easier," Renjun said.

“No, I’m not asking you to avoid me. I’m not saying you’re tempting me now, when you’re doing nothing. I’m just saying that you did. Why are you making this so complicated?”

"If you don’t want me to avoid you, what do you want?”

"I just want you to admit that you wanted me to drink your blood. I want an apology," Jeno said stubbornly.

Renjun stared at Jeno. Jeno didn’t want an apology. He wanted an admission of guilt. Renjun would rather cut his own tongue out.

Renjun swept his arm under him and bent forward in the mockery of a bow. "Okay, Jeno, then I apologize that my existence bothers you so much. I hope that satisfies you."

He turned and swept out of the kitchen, leaving Jeno in stunned silence.

Now, sitting in their living room, Renjun felt like all their eyes were on him, except for Jisung's and Chenle's. Chenle was busy not looking at Jisung except when he thought Jisung wasn't looking, and Jisung was busy looking at Chenle except when he thought Chenle was looking. It was an unusually coordinated display of avoiding eye contact.

Jeno watched him, still stewing over something, though Renjun had given him as much of an apology as he was willing to give.

Jaemin watched him with the same intensity as usual, but without his usual humor. Usually he'd divide his attention between Renjun and Donghyuck, but he hadn’t looked away from Renjun yet. He glanced down at Renjun's arms from time to time, so Renjun had a sneaking suspicion he knew what this was about. Did Jeno tell Jaemin everything?

Even Donghyuck watched him.

"Explain why this had to be at our apartment again?" Renjun asked, to ease the jitteriness he felt.

"It's hard to get an invite for three to Asomateus," Jaemin said apologetically. When he spoke Renjun relaxed a little. His voice held some of his usual humor, and he stopped looking at Renjun's arms.

"If that was the only other option, I guess this is better," Renjun said, though he looked at Chenle.

"Don't look at me," Chenle said. "I live in a studio."

"What do you have against my home?" Jaemin said.

"Creepy gothic mansion vs cozy apartment with a working heater? Which do you think is better?"

"Creepy gothic mansion, obviously," Donghyuck said.

"Yeah, duh," Jaemin said. They high-fived each other. "And my place is cozy."

Renjun remembered their suite, unfairly large for the two of Jeno and Jaemin. Though the furnishings were comfortable enough, it was an insult to small apartments everywhere to call that space cozy.

"Let's talk about Doyoung," Donghyuck said, because no one else was going to.

"I don't know what there is to talk about," Jeno said, though he sounded more sad than angry. "He doesn't remember anything."

"No, there isn't nothing," Donghyuck said. Jeno's head snapped toward him, and Donghyuck held up his hands to placate him, though he wasn't particularly angry yet. "Let me finish."

Donghyuck nodded at Renjun. Renjun stared back at him, not sure what he was on about.

Donghyuck nodded at Renjun again, this time with a variety of eyebrow movements. Renjun found them equally incomprehensible.

Donghyuck huffed. "How are you my best friend when you do not get the hint? We're supposed to be able to do the whole wordless communication thing. Tell them about what Doyoung does remember."

Oh, so that was it. "Doyoung and Jaehyun were sent to look for the missing pairs," Renjun said. “Doyoung said Jaehyun found some kind of clue.”

"And that after they found the clue, they went out by the perimeter, they went into the forest, and they went hunting," Donghyuck said. "So they must have figured out what happened to the other pairs."

"I don't think you can assume that," Renjun said.

"Well, okay, for Renjun here, let’s assume they didn’t figure out what happened. But we do know this: they went hunting in the forest for something, and that something has to do with the missing pairs. The clue must have told them where this something was, and probably what it was too, because they wouldn’t have gone after it without backup unless they thought they had a good fighting chance. If we trace Jaehyun's steps before they left, we should be able to find the same clue. If we can get that far—”

"How do you know they didn't all find the same clue?" Jisung piped up.

Everyone's attention turned to him, and he shrank a bit under it. "Who's they?" Donghyuck asked, a bit snappishly since Jisung had interrupted him.

"Go on," Jaemin said. He shot a warning look at Donghyuck.

Jisung shifted in his seat. "All the pairs that have vanished. How do we know they didn't all find the same clue and go the same way?"

No one wanted to answer his question.

"Yeah, whatever Jaehyun found could have been a trap for all we know," Chenle said.

"That's true," Donghyuck admitted. "But we won't know unless we find out what it is. Don't you want to know what led them into the forest?"

Slowly, one by one, they all nodded. They all nodded except for Renjun.

Renjun saw Donghyuck's expectant expression at the corner of his vision, but he couldn't bring himself to nod with them. Donghyuck mouthed something at him. Probably, what are you waiting for?

In his mind's eye, he saw two boys running in the forest. Running through brush so thick it could choke, to a place of no return. His pulse began to speed up. All the vampires in the room could hear it, so he tried to push it back down, but he had no control over his heartbeat. It ran away from him, just like he'd envisioned the boys running, running, running in that dark forest.

He shuddered.

"What's wrong?" Jaemin and Jeno asked at the same time.

He shook his head. "Nothing. It's fine."

None of the vampires looked convinced because they could still hear his heightened heartbeat. Donghyuck couldn't hear that, but he could read their faces just fine.

Renjun tried to imagine what his painting during Placements had looked like to them. From the audience they couldn’t have seen much detail. Boys in gray dwarfed by a massive trees, shrouded by darkness. Even if they could make out that the boys were in training squadron uniforms, it wouldn't have been an unusual scene. A lot of missions went into the forest. They couldn't have felt the vision behind the painting. Even Professor Koon hadn't felt it until she stepped to his side. Maybe they thought he'd been painting what he wanted from the future, not knowing that he didn't want to be part of a training squadron at all.

He thought about bringing up the painting, and discarded the idea. He didn't want them to think that he'd been psyched out by his own magic. Just because there'd been training squadron uniforms and a forest didn't mean it had anything to do with the real world.

"Just been having bad dreams lately, about forests,” he said.

"Nightmares keeping you up again?"

Renjun glared at Donghyuck. Nice of him to bring that up in front of all the people he'd like knowing that he had nightmares that kept him up at night.

"They don't keep me up. I just have them."

Donghyuck made a cooing noise. "Don't worry, I'll protect you from the big bad monsters in the forest, baby."

Donghyuck ducked out of the way to escape Renjun's incoming stranglehold. He wasn't successful. Renjun wrestled him to the ground, but he got much less satisfaction from it than he hoped, since Donghyuck was laughing the whole time.

Renjun's pulse settled.

The painting wasn't real. It was a figment of his subconscious like the dreams he'd had since childhood.

It probably came from those dreams, mixed with the stress of finding Doyoung in the woods.

No matter how real the fear felt, it was a manifestation of his stress.

No matter how real the boys felt.

He hadn't been able to see the boys' faces in his painting. He'd painted their backs. It should have made him feel better, because not having faces made them less real, but the limbo of not knowing who they were, of not being able to confirm that they were strangers, that they were fiction, was worse.

He felt like he knew them.

The fear he felt for them hadn't been the dispassionate kind. He hadn't been afraid in that general oh something terrible is going to happen type of way, though it had felt certain that something terrible was going to happen.

He had been afraid to lose them.

* * *

Sunday morning came, and Renjun woke up to the sound of the laundry machine running and drawers being open and shut. He wandered into the living room, rubbing his eyes. He settled at the coffee table with a cup of tea, while Donghyuck went around the house, throwing this and that into his suitcase. This was their typical move-out routine.

Renjun had packed up the night before, and his duffel bag waited for him by the door. He sipped his tea while he enjoyed the morning's entertainment of Donghyuck running from room to room.

Donghyuck left any and all packing for the last moment possible, and also wanted to bring back home his whole wardrobe and as much of his life as he could fit into one suitcase.

"Where's the mini-blender?" Donghyuck yelled from the other room.

"Behind the big blender? Why do you need a blender? Don't you have a blender back home?"

"In case I want smoothies, obviously. And no, the one back home is broken."

"It's winter," Renjun said.

"Your point?"

After a couple hours of flying clothes, kitchen implements, favorite books and movies that Donghyuck swore he needed the hardcopy of, and several less easily identifiable objects, Donghyuck finished. Renjun looked at the clock and clapped his hands.

"New record," he said with a yawn. "You're done before 11."

Donghyuck headed out at noon to the train station, wishing Renjun a good holiday.

"Don't miss me too much," he said.

"You wish," Renjun said. "I've seen enough of you for the year."

"I get that you're sad you can't ring in the new year with this beautiful face. Alas, it cannot be," Donghyuck said.

"Did you mean to say glad? Because I'm glad I get a full two weeks without your ugly mug."

"Don't be jealous, Renjun," Donghyuck said, waving a hand airily. "It's not a good look."

With that Donghyuck walked down the street, his suitcase wheels clicking as they rolled over the cracks in the sidewalk. Renjun settled down to wait for his mother to come pick him up.

She had texted him that she would come after lunch, but not how long after.

The minutes dragged into hours. Renjun didn’t want to admit it, but the apartment felt empty without Donghyuck.

His mother arrived late in the afternoon, when the light had started to wane. He leapt up when he got her call, threw his duffel over his shoulder, and took the stairs down two at a time.

His mother had parked their old silver car by the side of the street, and stood leaning against the front door.

She looked as she always did, sleek and a little intimidating to those who didn't know her. She wore silk blouse tucked into thin dark pants, and a pair of stilettos. She didn't look much like Renjun. Her hair was a much lighter brown, and tied into a high ponytail that hung down to the middle of her back. Her eyes were larger and more angled, also a lighter brown than his, her nose more sharp, and her lips more full. They had the same angled jawline though, and thin stature.

He waved, and she lifted her head in acknowledgement. He knew better than to run over and hug her, though he wanted to. She wasn't much of a hugs person.

"I missed you, mom," he said.

The sharp lines of her face softened. She smiled. She didn't smile often, but when she did she seemed years younger, less worried and more carefree. "I missed you too. Now get in the car."

* * *

The hour long drive home would have been 40 minutes if it weren't for the abysmal traffic. The traffic was always abysmal. It never felt very long to Renjun.

His mother told him about how they'd started serving banana pancakes in the morning at the cafe. They were a hit, and they'd started to consider offering more pancake flavor options on the menu. "I'll have you try them all," she said.

Renjun told her about school, cherrypicking the parts he thought she would like. Even so, the time flew by. There was a lot to catch up on.

His mother didn't call him when he was at school, and he didn't call her. She said it would be a distraction. He didn't know if she meant a distraction for her or him. He'd wanted to protest that most people called their parents and it wasn't a distraction—Donghyuck called his every week. Her response would probably be that he wasn't Donghyuck, so he needed to focus more. The things he wanted to tell her would pile on until eventually they became lost under each other, and he didn't remember the details of them or why he had wanted to tell her about them in the first place.

He told her about the different units of Magic class, and some of the more infuriating parts of Human Studies.

"Supernaturals always look down on humans," she said.

"You don't," he said.

"Even I used to," she said. "Before you came along, of course." She looked at him warmly, which by her standards was the epitome of affection.

_What about dad?_ Renjun wanted to ask, like he always did. He held his tongue, like he always did. They didn't talk about his father. He had left while Renjun was still an infant, and bringing him up put his mother into a mood. Renjun didn't remember anything about him, not even one faded memory, so most of the time he wasn't that curious anyway.

He cared enough to wonder why, if she hated him, she carried his photo in her wallet. It was a faded photograph of four people grinning at a camera, including someone who only vaguely resembled Renjun, his arm around a much younger, happier version of his mother.

Renjun told his mother about a couple of Donghyuck's less outrageous antics, which earned a chuckle. He strategically avoided talking about his increasing interactions with vampires, or how he'd found Doyoung in the forest. He mentioned Chenle briefly.

His mother had met Chenle once, when she dropped him off after break last year. She'd said he seemed like a nice boy for a vampire, and Renjun wasn't sure if that was approval or disapproval.

"Remember to be careful around vampires," she said, like he would forget.

"I have mixed classes next year," he said.

"Then you'll just have to be more careful. Never forget that even if you have magic, you aren't one of them."

* * *

Winter break felt like a dream, as always. Renjun spent his days helping out at his mother's cafe, taking orders at the cashier or bringing out drinks and food to customers. He had to wear an apron around his waist with a cuddly bear on it, and on new year's eve they had a special where the employees all wore headbands with fluffy brown bear ears. He was glad no one from the academy was there to see him.

When he wasn't at the cafe, he wandered around the streets through the old park near his house, into the library, through the empty grounds of his elementary school, and past storefronts filled with holiday deals. With the limited spending money his mother had given him, he got buns from his favorite bakery, made a snack run at the grocery store, and stopped at other cafes (he wasn't a traitor; he called it research). He sent pictures to Donghyuck of the food he ate, and got pictures back of Donghyuck with his cousins, all also growing up to become terrors to society, Donghyuck promised.

He helped tend the garden in their backyard. From botany club he knew some of the plants and their uses in magic, but part of staying in the dream was not talking about magic.

Everyone around him was human, except the most important person, and she seemed determined to pretend magic was a distant fantasy, so he did too. He would talk about the academy, but nothing outside of that.

Some part of him that was usually wound up tight unscrewed itself and stretched. He didn't have to hide his humanness here. It was what made him fit in.

He felt at home.

There were times he almost woke from the dream. It didn't feel quite right to act like the supernatural world didn't exist when for most of the past 12 months he'd lived and breathed it. He'd see flashes as he walked down the streets. He would think he saw a pair of amber eyes instead of brown, or a training squadron uniform instead of a gray shirt with the words "Love Never Dies" printed in big letters on the front.

He'd think about asking his mother about her magic, about the visitors who went to the back of the cafe instead of the front, and about why Yuta would have been interested in more than half the plants that grew in their garden. He never got around to it. Complacency won out.

He ate so many pancakes he thought he would die happy if he never saw one again.

* * *

They went to their favorite restaurant up on the hill. It was their tradition to go the Friday before he had to head back to school from any holiday. It wasn't a trendy place, but it had great fish curry and noodle soups, and the power of many years of nostalgia.

"School's going to start next Monday," his mother said. "Do you want me to take you up Saturday or Sunday?"

"Sunday," Renjun said, as always.

"Are you looking forward to it?" his mother asked.

Renjun was never sure if this was a trick question. "I'm looking forward to seeing my friends," he said. "I'll miss you though. I wish I could stay longer."

This was the point where his mother folded her napkin and did not say she would miss him or that she wanted him to stay longer. Her face would not soften the way it did when she picked him up, and she would not smile. She would say, "You can't stay longer."

He didn't want to hear that, so he rushed on. "Also, I got into an advanced magic class. Isn't that crazy?"

His mother stopped folding her napkin halfway. "Did you say an advanced magic class?"

"Yes?"

She put her napkin down. "We're going home. Now."

Renjun watched in bewilderment as his mother packed the half-finished curry in front of them into into a neat to-go box and paid the bill.

She drove down the hill far over the speed limit, and when they reached home, she sat him down at the kitchen table while she paced in front of it. "This isn't what I expected," she said to herself. "This isn't right."

Renjun didn't dare interrupt her. He watched.

Eventually, she stopped pacing. "When you get back to the academy, you go and tell them you don't want to be in the advanced magic class. Which one did you get into? No, it doesn't matter."

"What? Why?" Renjun asked.

"I know it's disappointing, but I know what's best for you. Just listen to me."

The dream began to crack around him.

“Why?”

"You don't belong in an advanced magic class," she said. The worst part was she said it without any kind of condescension. “I can take you up to the admin’s office before we go to your apartment on Sunday.”

"No," he said. "I'm not going to do it."

With those words, the dream shattered.

* * *

Renjun's mother drove him back up to his apartment on Saturday, in stony silence. She did not look at him when they pulled up on the curb.

"See you," he said.

He waited for her to say something, but she didn't. He opened the front car door, got out, and went to get his duffel bag from the backseat. After he got his duffel bag out, he heard the side window slide down.

"Be safe Renjun," his mother said.

She still did not look at him. The car window slid back up, and she drove away.

Renjun stood at the side of the curb with his duffel bag at his feet, watching her go.

* * *

Donghyuck wasn't due back until Sunday morning. In the darkness of night, their small cozy apartment felt too large for one.

* * *

Renjun walked through the forest to the lake. He saw no animals this time.

He walked up to the lake's edge. The season had changed, and the mountains he could see on the other side of the lake now had caps of snow.

He didn't look down yet. He felt safe here by the stillness of the lake, and though he was alone, he was not afraid. The wind blew around him, ruffling his hair. He supposed it should be cold, since he saw snow on the other side, but the slow dream never felt hot or cold.

He stood there until he got tired of looking at the bright moon in the sky.

He looked down, waiting to see that flash of color. He hoped when he woke that it was morning and not the middle of the night.

His eyes met those of his reflection, but he didn't wake up.

This time, Renjun saw the eyes clearly. The eyes staring back at him were the exact same size and shape as his, but they were orange-yellow cat's eyes, the pupils dark and round.

Renjun saw all of his reflection. Nothing else about his reflection was changed aside from the eyes.

The reflection blinked, though he did not.

"Hello," his reflection said.

Renjun woke up to the sound of a door being slammed open.

"Guess who's back?" Donghyuck shouted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> winter break comes and goes in the blink of an eye


	14. back to school

"Come on, let's go," Donghyuck called.

Renjun took a last look at himself in the mirror.

"You've been in there forever. Stop checking yourself out," Donghyuck called again.

"I'm not," Renjun shouted back, glad he'd closed the bathroom door so that Donghyuck couldn't see that he was. He wasn't checking himself out, exactly, but if Donghyuck caught him staring at his reflection for a solid minute, there was nothing he could say to get himself out of that one.

His reflection was normal. 100% him, 100% real, as it had always been. He didn't know why he kept turning back to it, as if it would change the moment his attention shifted.

Dark brown eyes stared back at him, framed by his brows and darker brown hair. He looked more anxious than he'd like, but that made it more real too. He stared at himself, forcing the anxiousness to smooth into indifference. He brushed his bangs out with his fingers.

That was better.

He was a fourth year, maybe not too cool to avoid the nerves of a first day of school with new classmates, but too cool to show the nerves. Ah, the pretenses he'd managed to build up in a mere three years. Amazing.

With a last glance at mirror, he left the bathroom. He grabbed his scarf from his chair, and headed out of their apartment with Donghyuck.

* * *

The academy should have been buzzing with excitement. It was the first day of the new school year. Renjun saw some of the usual fervor. Starry-eyed first years wandered lost across a campus that they thought too large but would soon know like the back of their hand. Returning students ran over to friends, and shot dirty looks at enemies. Fourth year witches and vampires eyed each other with equal amounts of curiosity and nervousness, though the vampires did a better job of hiding their nerves. Fifth years and above strolled the campus with lazy disdain for the excitement of their underclassmen, though really, the fifth years were faking it. They were the most nervous since they had to face pairings.

All of it was there, but it felt subdued.

The usual buzz was overwritten by another thread of talk that most of the students, witch or vampire, whispered to each other behind their hands. Even the first years got fragments of it, though most of them weren't steeped enough in general campus knowledge—otherwise known as gossip—to grasp the importance of it.

Doyoung was back on campus.

Everyone knew who Doyoung was. Most of the students followed the training squadron lineup like a religion. Even those that didn't, an endangered species that might consist of only Renjun, knew the big hitters from their friends. Doyoung and his partner Jaehyun were the only fifth years drafted in the mid-year draft last year, so they'd gotten special attention.

They had lived up to the hype, taking on missions that were beyond the norm for new additions to the training squadrons. In their first three months, they caught one rogue vampire who'd been on a killing spree through the city, and a witch who had been selling human flesh on the black market. It was as if they had a taste for danger. Those were the kind of missions where mistakes could be fatal.

Maybe their success had blinded them.

Everyone saw that Doyoung was back after months of no word, and Jaehyun was not by his side. Everyone guessed what that meant.

"Johnny," Donghyuck called, seeing a tall man strolling across the side of campus. The head turned, and Donghyuck waved wildly. Renjun didn't know how Donghyuck was still friends with Johnny after his heartbreak several years back, but as he stumbled toward the end of that slow and painful path paved with tears, he’d stumbled around back into friendship. Now it was as if none of it had happened. ("Puppy love, like I said," Donghyuck would say.) They were closer than they had been. Close enough that Donghyuck would go to Johnny instead of Renjun for love advice—"Because he's got experience, okay?" which Renjun couldn't argue with but still felt was unfair. And who goes to their ex-crush for advice about their new crush? Renjun chose not to question the workings of Donghyuck’s mind.

Johnny was all geared up, in a sleeveless form-fitting vest, pants that came down to his mid-calf, and combat boots. All the gear was gray, and Renjun saw the trademark white half circle struck through with lines sewn into the back. Johnny wasn't wearing the standard robe over the top, despite the cold.

"I'm so glad he chose the sleeveless version of the uniform," Donghyuck said, eyes on Johnny's very well-muscled arms.

"Haven't you been over him for years?" Renjun said.

Donghyuck rolled his eyes. "That doesn't mean I don't know how to appreciate," he said.

Renjun snorted.

Donghyuck’s appreciation, and Renjun’s lack thereof (he really wasn’t looking, really) were interrupted by a familiar voice and an arm slung around Renjun's shoulders.

"Two of my favorite people," Yuta said with a smile. "I was looking for you. So glad to see you." That couldn't be good. As if he knew what Renjun was thinking, Yuta patted Renjun reassuringly on the shoulder. Of course, this made Renjun more suspicious.

"I wish I could say the same," Renjun said under his breath, but, of course, Yuta heard him.

"Aw, so cheeky as usual. Really missed having this energy around," Yuta said, going in to try to pinch Renjun's cheek. Renjun jerked his head out of the way. Experience allowed him to predict Yuta's moves. Yuta had taken a liking to Renjun from the start, and though Renjun had to admit he didn’t dislike Yuta, he had been put off Yuta's confidence (Renjun would call it arrogance) and tendency to go for Renjun's cheeks. Yuta knew he was hot shit, and he acted like it.

Worse, no matter what Renjun said, Yuta thought Renjun liked him and was pretending not to.

"I know you missed me," Yuta said, unruffled by Renjun's attempts to shrug his arm off his shoulder.

Yuta had been letting his hair grow out, and it had gotten even longer over winter break. He was one of the few witches that Renjun thought looked more like a vampire than some of the vampires themselves, especially with the long hair. He had angular, sharp look like them, and moved with a fluidity reminiscent of their inhuman grace. Renjun had always thought that was part of why Yuta hadn’t paired with anyone for most of his fifth year. He was too much like a vampire himself.

Though it’d still worked out for him in the end. After going through many vampires, Yuta had paired with someone at the end of last year. They hadn't seen who it was. Renjun peered around to see if they were with Yuta now, but no luck.

"I expect you'll both be joining botany club again this year?" Yuta said, his smile widening in a way that promised terrible punishments if they were to refuse.

"I expect I'll be allowed to partake in the benefits again this year?" Donghyuck said.

Yuta raised an eyebrow at Donghyuck. "The same benefits as last year," he said.

"Plus miribilis roots," Donghyuck said, and Yuta looked at him thoughtfully, like he was checking the boxes off a mental checklist.

"Fine," Yuta said. "But Donghyuck, you see, I'm a busy man." He pulled out the sign up sheet from his pocket with his other hand, deftly unfolding the paper with two fingers. "We need at least two more first years. See if you two can find me some."

Like Renjun had said, Yuta was never up to any good.

Donghyuck and Yuta grinned at each other like sharks, and shook hands.

As they shook hands, Renjun said, "Don't I get any say in this?"

"You knew what you were getting into when you became friends with this one," Yuta said, while Donghyuck shrugged. Yuta passed the paper off with a flip of his hand. "See you two around."

Yuta winked at Renjun. Renjun ignored it, again with the ease of long-suffering practice.

After Yuta left, Johnny walked up to them.

Donghyuck and Johnny did some kind of handshake that involved moving their bodies kind of weird and chest bumps. Considering their height difference, it was impressive that they pulled it off.

"What are you doing on campus?" Donghyuck asked. Johnny was in his final year at the academy now. Seventh years didn't have classes.

"Patrolling," Johnny said.

"Since when did you patrol campus?" Donghyuck asked.

"Since now," he said.

"Why?" Renjun asked, all innocence, like they didn't know about Doyoung or the missing pairs.

Johnny's grin faltered. "I don't think I'm supposed to say," he said. He probably hadn't been supposed to say even that, but he wasn't good at lying.

"You don't trust us?" Donghyuck said, rounding his eyes. Renjun cringed internally at the act. "I'm hurt."

"Wait, wait, of course I trust you," Johnny said. Johnny looked around them furtively, before leaning down and whispering, "Okay, you can't tell anyone I told you this, but there's been signs of, well, this is going to sound crazy, but there's been signs of demon activity."

Renjun and Donghyuck both made convincingly shocked faces.

Johnny backpedaled a bit. "Nothing too crazy, of course, but we're upping the security just in case. No need to worry though. It's probably a false alarm, and even if it's not, we've got your backs. More specifically, right now I've got your back."

_But who has got yours?_ Renjun thought.

"This is a lot to process, but thanks for telling us, Johnny," Donghyuck said.

Johnny looked around again. "No problem. Just don't tell anyone. Like, I trust you both, but don't tell anyone."

* * *

They didn't need Johnny to tell them the truth.

In the gathering in the central courtyard to welcome in the new year, the announcement came.

It came in the most watered down way. There was no mention of the missing pairs, or Doyoung and Jaehyun. The words were sanitized almost to sweetness, or at least to such a bland flavor that it was almost possible to ignore their contents.

Possible demon activity, far far far away from campus. Nothing to worry about. Safety precautions that aren't necessary, but we want to be prepared, capisce?

Now we move on to the school rules!

It didn't stop the hush that stole over the crowd. They were too young to truly know of demons and they had no idea of war, but the pieces they did know were enough to disquiet them. They saw the seriousness on their professors' faces.

In this unsettled quiet, they were sent off.

A cheery booming declaration. You're all dismissed. Have a great year.

On their way out, Donghyuck sweet-talked some first years into signing their lives over to the botany club, but his heart wasn't in it.

* * *

The flavor of twilight washed the campus in dim tones of blue. Renjun walked between two statues with the heads of lions and the bodies of serpents and stepped through an arched entranceway. Donghyuck followed at his heels.

They met Chenle in front of the hall where they'd have their shared class for the next year. It was less a lecture hall and more a gymnasium. Some hard-backed chairs had been set out on one side, but most of the room was empty space. Renjun saw no desks.

"About time you got here," Chenle said. The class had almost 150 students, so all the seats were already taken.

They walked into the room.

Jaemin waved at them, and even Jeno lifted his head in acknowledgement. Renjun saw that they'd both gotten seats, and that Jaemin was surrounded by both witches and vampires who wanted his attention. When Renjun looked more closely, he saw that some other students had a similar fixation on Jeno. Here and there they sat, close but not next to Jeno, and their eyes never seemed to gravitate far from him. None of them tried to get closer to him. It was as if they didn't dare. Though he must have noticed them, he ignored them. Both these groups turned toward the three of them in near perfect sync, and Renjun saw a range of expressions from cool disinterest to clear dislike.

Renjun resisted the urge to duck behind Donghyuck. He walked with his head held high, trying to channel the indifference he'd practiced in front of the mirror. This year of all years he would not give anyone the satisfaction of seeing him afraid. At least half of them had already seen his magic at its worst. They had seen him fail and fail again, and the part he most wanted to forget, had seen him burst into tears first year in a mixture of confusion, homesickness, and the loneliness of no friends, no family, and no way to belong. Meeting Donghyuck had been his saving grace.

Without thinking, Renjun touched the bindings on his arms, making sure they were wrapped secure. Donghyuck saw his movement and frowned.

He'd finally shown Donghyuck the way of his magic. He hadn't expected Donghyuck to understand it, but he had expected Donghyuck to be happy for him. At last, Renjun had reached the basic level of the others in their class. Instead, Donghyuck had grasped Renjun's hand and examined the dot of red that welled up in its center, watching its progress with trepidation. Renjun had done only a prick that time, for a flame on a fingertip. He was glad he hadn't gone for anything more fancy.

Since then Donghyuck had tried to stop him from doing magic that way. "I don't like it, that you're bleeding," Donghyuck had said. "It doesn't seem right. There must be another way."

It was undue concern for a measly drop of blood.

"Maybe there's another way," Renjun had said, but he hadn't said he would stop.

Donghyuck couldn't understand. He had grown up surrounded by magic. Magic hummed in his blood, came to him as natural as breathing. He couldn't imagine a world without magic, not due to any limit in his imagination, but because it was so ingrained in his everyday existence.

The world of magic was Donghyuck's world. It was the only world he knew.

For Renjun, that world had always felt separate from his normal life, a mad fantasy that he'd one day wake up from. Even within it, he always felt like he stood at a locked door he could not find the key to. So now that he'd found a key and ventured past the gate, he couldn't bring himself to turn back. Perhaps he would have been able to turn back if he hadn't made it so far, if he'd only kept knocking on the door with no response but frustration. But he'd had a taste of that wonder, of that power, and he wanted it.

It was this close. Magic that was his.

Magic that was _his._

He wanted it so bad.

His current conundrum was pulling it off with vampires in the class. With the many layers of bindings on his arms, if he made sure only to use a drop of blood, it could probably get by unnoticed. He'd just have to make sure he didn't stand too close to the vampires. He already knew this strategy was flawed. It wouldn’t work forever, and it wouldn't work for more complicated magic, but he would figure it out when he got there.

Donghyuck, Chenle, and Renjun joined some of the others who hadn't managed to snag a seat. They stood at the side behind the seats.

Two professors walked in, one from each side of the hall, and stopped next to each other in the center. One Renjun recognized from Placements. Professor Sora Kim, appearing as tall, stern, and deadly as she had from the Placements stage. The other he hadn't seen before. From the languid way one step flowed into the next, he knew the professor was a vampire, even before he felt any hint of an aura. The vampire professor introduced himself as Jao. Not Professor Jao, just Jao. Jao's voice sounded familiar, but Renjun didn't know why.

With all the vampire auras around him, Renjun didn't expect to discern the professor's from the crowd. He could barely tell one apart from the other. Though none of them overwhelmed his senses, they seemed to merge into one giant mass, the different energies hard to tell apart from one another. He could pick out Chenle's, from familiarity and closeness, and was surprised that he could recognize hints of Jaemin's and Jeno's auras too.

Jao's aura pulsed through the crowd, and for a flash, Renjun felt it clearly, a thick dark aura that flowed syrupy thick over his senses. The vampires around him stiffened. They must have felt it too. Even some of the witches looked uneasy, looking around themselves as if they'd felt something that raised hairs on the back of their necks. Renjun could pick out no emotions from Jao's aura; those he hid well.

"Now that we have your attention," Jao said, though both the words and the display of his aura were unnecessary. The professors had gained their attention they moment they stepped through the doors. An amused smile graced his lips. He spread his hands wide. "Welcome to your fourth year."

Renjun still thought he sounded familiar, though he had never seen the vampire in his life.

"Fourth year is one of the most exciting years you'll experience at the academy. It's my favorite year, and fourth year mixed classes are my favorite class. That's why I teach it," Jao said.

It hit Renjun suddenly. It was that night, which felt so long ago now, when they'd snuck in to hear the professors' meeting. He remembered the voice tinged with amusement.

_Is that so bad? A vampire who cannot defend himself does not deserve to live._

Renjun shivered.

"As Jao says, it will be an exciting year," Professor Kim said, with no small amount of disdain placed on the word exciting, "But it will be equally harrowing. You will learn to work together, as witches and vampires. This requires dedication, focus, and talent. Unlike Jao, I have no fondness for your year, and I have no patience for foolishness."

"Lighten up, Sora," Jao said. "You'll have them shivering in their boots." Yet it was he who sent out another pulse with his aura, for an instant pushing aside all the other auras again. Somehow Renjun knew that he was demanding their attention, and the vampires could not refuse. Renjun could, because it was not aimed at him, but even he felt the pull of it. The power of it sent another shiver down Renjun's spine. "It was not easy for witches and vampires to learn to work together. It has never been easy. Though our predecessors have paved the way for us, it will not be easy for you all," he said. "You will face discomfort, and you will make mistakes. It's a part of the process. Embrace it. It will be entertaining for me, and painful for you."

"It will be educational for you," Professor Kim corrected. "You will make mistakes. You will learn. Or you will face consequences, which, as Jao said, will be painful."

Jao clapped his hands together. "To start, before we can learn to work together, we must visualize our differences. Any brave volunteers? I need a witch and a vampire. No? No? The top of our class then. Jeno and Donghyuck, please come out."

Jeno uncoiled himself from his chair with reluctance, while Donghyuck strode forward, at ease despite the eyes of the crowd. They went up to where the professors stood. Jao had Jeno and Donghyuck stand several meters away from each other.

"Have at it then," he said.

They both stared at him.

He sighed. "Was I not obvious enough? Fight."

Jeno reacted first. The vampires were used to being pit in fights against each other, but witches didn't have fighting in their curriculum. In fact, up through the end of their previous year, it was against the rules to use magic to harm others outside of a dueling club. The rule wasn't strictly enforced, but it existed.

At the word fight, Jeno moved.

Renjun's heart leapt up to his throat, as he saw Jeno run at Donghyuck. He was too fast. The meters between them closed in seconds, Jeno flying at Donghyuck as if he'd been any other vampire.

But Donghyuck wasn't top of their year for nothing. Jeno was moving too fast to get a clear view of, but Donghyuck raised a hand, and a wall extended up from the ground across the open space between them, several meters high. It blocked Jeno's path.

Renjun thought this would slow Jeno down, but he didn't stop. He accelerated, and leaped. He was truly flying through the air then, impossibly high. He landed on the top of the wall, and bounded forward.

Donghyuck had been moving too, running back from the wall he'd raised, trying to get more space. He wasn't fast enough.

He was running when Jeno caught him by the back. Thankfully, he didn't throw Donghyuck toward the side of the auditorium. Instead, Jeno pinned him to the ground, and held his arms behind his back.

Jeno looked toward Jao to call an end to the fight. As he turned, Renjun saw Donghyuck's magic flare. Jeno yelped and jumped back. Donghyuck's forearms, where Jeno had been holding him, now blazed with fire.

Donghyuck flipped over and threw fire like an arrow at Jeno. Jeno leapt to the side, barely avoiding the arrow, but as he leapt, Donghyuck twisted his hand and the arrow split into fragments. Some of them flew at Jeno. He avoided one of them, but another got him in the arm. The skin it touched reddened and peeled. Donghyuck watched it, open-mouthed with horror. He'd never hit a living target before. Even though it must have burned, instead of trying to avoid the other flames, Jeno started running at Donghyuck again.

The remaining flames followed him Jeno, and some hit their mark. Jeno kept running, the only indication of his pain a grimace for each hit. He didn't slow.

Donghyuck hadn't gotten up from the ground yet, and he stared at Jeno's wounds. They were closing up as Jeno moved, since Donghyuck hadn't thrown especially hot flames, but Donghyuck lay staring at the healing welts. Too late Donghyuck tore his gaze away from the welts and saw how close Jeno had come. He tried to gather more fire into his hand. It was slow, too slow.

Jeno raised his arm, and his fingers curled.

"You can stop now," Jao said.

Jeno stopped in his tracks, his arm half extended toward Donghyuck. Like a tape put on rewind, he straightened and let his arm fall to his side.

Donghyuck lay on the ground, his chest rising and falling. It took him longer to extinguish the flame in his hand. His mouth was still half-open. He closed it.

Jeno offered a hand to Donghyuck. Donghyuck looked at it suspiciously, but after a moment, he clasped it and let Jeno pull him up.

Seeing the red blotches on Jeno's skin, Donghyuck winced. "Sorry," he said.

"What for?" Jeno said. "It was a good fight."

"Camaraderie. Very nice," Jao said. "I hope to see as much sportsmanship from the rest of you," he said, but based on his bemused expression, he didn't. Renjun thought he might prefer to see them claw each other’s throats out. Not out of any malicious intent, but because it'd be entertaining.

He sent Jeno and Donghyuck back to their places with the rest of the class. Donghyuck seemed vaguely shell-shocked. Renjun patted him on the back, but he wasn't sure Donghyuck got much comfort out of it.

"So what did we learn?" Jao asked the class. He got some vague answers about the power of fire magic, and jumping over walls.

"That fighting is stupid," Renjun whispered to Chenle.

"You. What did you say?" Jao said, his eyes suddenly on Renjun. Oh, shit. Renjun hadn't thought Jao would have been able to hear him from the back of the room, but maybe his senses were as enhanced as his aura abilities.

"Nothing, um, professor," Renjun mumbled.

"Jao is fine," Jao said. "What's your name?"

"Renjun."

Renjun thought Jao would say something else, but he didn't. He turned back to the rest of the class. "All good answers, but my answer is this. To the witches, vampires will always be faster than you. To the vampires, a witch’s magic will always be faster than you. Remember this."

Professor Kim stepped forward. "Now, the two from the bottom of the class. Jae and Renjun."

Renjun's heart leapt back up into his throat. He looked at Donghyuck and Chenle to see if they'd heard the same thing as him, and from their stricken expressions, they had. This couldn't be happening. It felt like a replay of Park's classes. First here's the glorious example from our top of class, and now here's the fuck up. Except this time, after it was over, there'd be Jao's ever amused voice asking, "So what did we learn?"

One of the vampires from the side of the room started to walk up to the professors, and Renjun forced himself to follow suit, though his legs felt like they'd been weighed down with lead.

"Stand here," Jao said, leading Renjun over to the spot Donghyuck had taken before. Too quietly for the others to hear, he said, "Fighting may be stupid, but if you must fight, it would be more stupid not to be able to defend yourself. Yes?"

"Yes," Renjun said, equally quietly.

"I knew you were a smart one," Jao said.

"Is this a punishment?" Renjun asked, before he thought better of it.

"This? No it's all planned out. I wouldn't punish you for mouthing off. The one to do that is Kim. I rather wish you'd said it louder," Jao said, and walked away.

Too soon, Renjun faced the vampire across the room from him. He was small for a vampire, but Renjun knew that with their kind, looks could be deceiving.

"Fight," Professor Kim said.

Renjun barely knew what fighting meant. He remembered the wrappings around his arms. He couldn't bleed out a lot, not in front of all these vampires. Was it even worth it? If he let the vampire take him down, Kim might call an end to the fight, and all he lost would be his pride.

He glanced at his classmates. A mistake. Familiar faces brought the memory of familiar humiliations, and he thought he could see their hunger as they waited for him to mess up one more time. His efforts were reduced to temporary boredom relief, a note in a conversation, a did you hear what he did this time? I can't believe it! To them, he was the entertainment. He always had been.

His fingers twitched.

The vampire moved. Even the worst vampire in class was so fast. Nothing like Jeno—Renjun could follow his movements at least. But following didn't mean reacting.

Renjun had to be logical. What was one more humiliation? He could endure it, one more time. One more time.

The vampire was so close now.

One more damn time.

The vampire's fingers curled and his arm slashed toward Renjun. Renjun recoiled out of reflex. Renjun was lucky this vampire was the worst in class, because he was sure that dodge would have been useless on any of the rest of them.

Instead of catching the back of Renjun's head, the vampire's fingers clawed across his cheek, drawing blood.

A few drops flew into the air.

Renjun stumbled back, but the vampire's attention was drawn away from him to the blood in the air. The vampire's nostrils flared.

Blood.

His blood was out.

Renjun almost smiled. Now no one would know.

Renjun reached for his magic. When he felt his core, he somehow knew he didn't need to cut into it this time—drawing blood had been enough. He called to his magic, and it answered. Awakened by his blood and his desire for it, it pulsed, hungry and eager. A thread of it surged out through him, as more blood flowed down his cheek.

His veins hummed with its energy. He felt so alive he almost felt hungry.

He stepped forward and placed a hand on the vampire's chest. He didn't notice the vampire's bewilderment. The tendrils of his magic wound in through the vampire's body, searching.

He found it soon enough. The vampire's core, his aura covering it but not enough to hide it from Renjun's magic. The core wasn't particularly powerful, a small dark thing.

He probed at it, feeling the vampire's rather meager power with a strange sense of disappointment. It would have to do.

_It would have to do? For what?_

For himself. Hadn't he wanted to become more powerful? Here was some power. It wasn't much, but the energy within it swirled beneath its surface, enticing even in its weakness.

_So defenseless. So easy to take._

Wait—take?

Yes. _Take_. He could take this power.

_Take him._

He could take it all. He could eat the vampire alive.

His magic began to materialize from curling tendrils into a more solid shape around the vampire's core. The vampire in front of him whimpered, so quietly Renjun wouldn't have heard him if he wasn't right by Renjun's ear.

The sound stopped Renjun cold.

He jerked his hand back from the vampire's chest, and pulled his magic back. It came slow and reluctant, complaining about not being used. What had he been doing?

He wasn't sure.

Something about taking. Something about power.

Something was wrong with him today.

The vampire met Renjun's eyes, the pupils shaking, and Renjun hated how good the fear made him feel.

"I yield," the vampire said.

"You yield?" Professor Kim said, incredulous. But once said, it was done.

Renjun went for a handshake with the other boy, since it seemed like standard etiquette. The boy slapped his hand away.

"Don't touch me," he said. The boy's pupils had stopped shaking, and his lip curled. "I shouldn't have lost to you. I must have gone mad." He stomped back to his seat.

Jao's voice followed him. "Why did you yield? Please enlighten us."

The boy flinched. Spitting out each word like it hurt him, he said, "He tricked me. He did something that made it seem like he was…like he had a lot of magic for a second."

Professor Kim shook her head. "There was no illusion magic, and they would not have learned how to do that in third year. From my observation, it appears that Renjun pushed some magic at Jae’s core, which, while rather useless as an offensive tactic, can be overwhelming to those inexperienced with magic."

Jao laughed. "I would say you tricked yourself, Jae. It would not be the first time, according to what I've heard of you," Jao said. "So what did we learn?”

“Don’t yield just because you’re scared?” one of the students said. The others laughed. The vampire Renjun had fought stared daggers at him. Renjun hadn’t made a friend there. Great, and this was only day one.

Jao shook a finger. “Sometimes. But fear is an important instinct, not one to ignore on a whim. We must learn when to trust our fear.”

Jao’s eyes roved around the class without lingering on any specific student. “My takeaway is this. Sometimes fighting is stupid when intimidation works better."

* * *

Jaemin leaned his head into Renjun's vision again, eyeing the cuts on his cheek.

"Can I taste it, Renjun, can I?" he asked.

"No, Jaemin, knock it off," Renjun said.

Jaemin pouted.

"Just because I'm bleeding and you're a vampire doesn't mean you automatically get to have taste it. Can you give me some respect?" Renjun said.

Jaemin kept pouting. "I know that, but how come Jeno got to?"

Renjun stopped in his tracks.

"What?" Chenle said. His next words died, the evidence clear from the looks on Jeno's and Renjun's faces.

"Don't bring me into this, Jaemin," Jeno said.

"Jeno didn't get to do anything. It was an accident."

"It's an accident that happened twice," Jaemin asked.

"That's what I said," Donghyuck said.

"You know about this too?" Chenle said.

"Why's Jeno special?" Jaemin was damned persistent.

"He's not. It was a mistake," Renjun snapped. Jeno twitched at the word mistake. "Right, Jeno?"

"Um, yeah. Right," Jeno said. Renjun glared at him. Very convincing.

"Is there something going on between you two?" Jaemin asked.

"No way," Jeno said, while Renjun said at the same time, "In my worst nightmare."

Now they both glared at each other.

"Your worst nightmare?" Jeno snarled. "It's me who should be saying that."

Jaemin narrowed his eyes.

"See, there's nothing. You know that. Stop it already, Jaemin," Renjun said.

Jaemin folded his arms over his chest.

Renjun threw up his hands. "Fine, Jaemin. I'll prove it. Have your taste." Renjun tapped his cheek.

"Seriously? Renjun," Donghyuck said, slapping his palm to his face.

Jaemin stopped, a little stunned. "Really?"

"Hurry up before I change my mind."

Jaemin glanced at Jeno. "You don't mind?"

"Why would I mind?" Jeno snarled.

"Why does it matter if he minds?" Renjun said sweetly.

"Okay..." Jaemin said. He stepped hesitantly over to Renjun.

Despite his hesitance, his fingers cupped Renjun's chin with confident ease. He turned Renjun's face to the side, and dipped his head toward Renjun's cheek. His face was too close. Renjun focused on keeping his body relaxed, keeping his breath from hitching, keeping normal.

Like Jeno, Jaemin had long lashes, Renjun noticed. Their lashes both appeared feathery soft, though Jaemin's were more brown than black.

Jaemin lapped at Renjun's face like a cat's.

It felt nice.

As always, Renjun was tempted to relax into it, to offer a little more, but he held himself together.

Renjun met Jeno's eyes over Jaemin's shoulder. Jeno glowered at them, but when he saw Renjun's gaze, he turned away.

"You taste nice, Junnie," Jaemin said, breathy against Renjun's ear. Renjun almost shivered, despite himself.

"Shut up," Renjun said, and pushed him back.

Jaemin stepped back without resistance. He pretended to flail from Renjun's shove, and clutched in his chest in mock pain. "You've wounded me," he said.

"I sure hope so," Renjun said. More seriously, he added. "This is the first and last time, okay?"

Though he spoke to Jaemin, he watched Jeno the whole time.

* * *

"You're an idiot," Donghyuck said later.

When Chenle heard the whole story, he shook his head. "For once we agree on something. You are an idiot."

"I know," Renjun moaned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is that title too literal?
> 
> i can't believe so many ppl have read this  
> thank you all for following along and your lovely comments, i'm sorry i'm so bad at responding so it's all been short responses...but they warm my heart


	15. beginnings

Renjun wasn't sure he had come to the right place. He stood in front of a door on the side of an oversized hut a ways off from the main part of campus. The winding path that had taken him up had taken over 10 minutes.

It had gotten more overgrown the further he walked up the path, until at the end he trod between patches of grass.

The path ended at a circular trellis covered with vines. Renjun had stepped through the trellis, avoiding a couple of the vines that trailed across the ground. He had picked his way through the overgrown front yard, pushing past the frond of some large green bush and trying not to quash any the smaller plants covering the ground. He hadn't been entirely successful, because there wasn't much clear ground to be seen, but he had tried.

He wasn't sure he could call it a garden. It was more a piece of the wild dropped into someone’s front yard. He was sure no one had tended it in years.

The hut itself didn't look run down, though vines grew up its sides. Renjun wasn't sure anyone was inside. He leaned his head against the door, trying to see if he could hear sounds of others talking, and thought about if he should knock.

A crash sounded near him, with a curse, and he jerked his head from the door.

Another boy lay sprawled to the side in the greenery, one of his feet tangled in a clump of vines. The boy had managed by sheer luck to avoid landing on any of dangerous-looking plants, which, unsurprisingly, was most of them.

Renjun would usually have waited for the boy to stand up himself, but there was only the two of them, and now the boy had already seen him. With a sigh, he went over and offered a hand.

The boy peered up at him. He had a thick upper lip, hair the same shade of brown as Jaemin's, and large eyes that watched Renjun with no shame at being caught face down in the dirt. His eyes reminded Renjun of a doe.

He grasped Renjun's hand, and instead of using it to help himself up, shook it with enthusiasm.

"I'm YangYang," he said. "And you?"

"Renjun," Renjun said. He couldn't recall seeing this boy in his classes, which was weird. Unless the boy wasn’t a fourth year. The boy might be lost. He looked like it, though Renjun had no idea why he would wander out so far. "Uh, do you want to get up?"

"Oh, right," YangYang said. He hopped up, and brushed the dirt off from his clothes. He shook his head like a dog, shaking dirt and leaves into Renjun’s face. A leaf hit Renjun’s forehead. He thought about smacking the boy, and then he thought about how he should at least try to make a good impression. He let it slide. "It's my first day here. I transferred in and they didn't get all the paperwork done before the school year started. Pleased to meet you. You're here for creation magic right?"

"Pleased to meet you too," Renjun said, though he wasn't sure he was. "Yeah. You're a fourth year?"

"Yup."

Together they approached the door. YangYang knocked before Renjun had a chance to say he wasn’t sure anyone was home. The door swung open. No one stood on the other side.

Much of the room was in disarray. Art supplies, strips of cardboard, pieces of wood, sheets of metal, and objects Renjun couldn't identify littered different sections of the room. A giant mural was painted on a paper hung over one wall. Renjun thought he saw sleeping bags in the corner. Unlike the wildness outside that likely came from neglect, the messiness in the room came from overuse.

Professor Koon stood bent over a white table, scribbling something on a paper while a clear liquid bubbling beside her was siphoned through a tube into an aquarium tank. Her large green parakeet sat on a wooden perch the thickness of Renjun's arm.

Oddly, the room had a kitchen with a stove. A red kettle on the stove began to whistle, and Professor Koon turned off the fire with a wave of her hand. The parakeet flew over to the kettle, picked it up in its talons, and started to pour the water into a teapot.

A small bell went off when the door opened, and Professor Koon lifted her head. "You're here. Perfect! Now we can get started."

"It's just the two of us?" Renjun asked.

"Yes, big class this year," she said, her green and brown eyes bright. "You'll probably see some of the upperclassmen throughout the year. They come and go from the studio as they please, as you'll be able to yourselves once you've gotten situated. They're mostly in the back when they're here."

She waved a hand and a flap of cloth Renjun hadn't noticed moved, clipping itself to the side of the wall. It revealed a hallway behind. She waved her hand again, and the cloth fell back in place.

"I'm sure you're curious what we do here," she said. "All in due time. First, some tea."

They drank their tea, and Professor Koon asked Renjun about his other classes and YangYang about his former academy.

It seemed like due time wasn't the hour they had together. She spent most of the time asking them questions about themselves. Renjun wasn't usually the type of student to ask questions, but the lack of information frustrated him past his normal limits. But asking didn’t do much. He couldn't get a straight answer.

When Renjun asked what kind of magic they would learn, she said, "This and that." When he asked what the curriculum was, she said, "Whatever is needed, most of the time. Sometimes whatever we feel like." When he asked how often they had tests, she said, "Pah, we don't have those."

YangYang didn't seem to mind Koon's answers. He took them in stride. Renjun didn’t know if he didn’t care, or if he expected to be told nothing.

By the end, Renun felt like he'd learned more about YangYang than the class. YangYang had two older siblings who were the bane of his existence, played the violin, and owned a black cat he’d named Sheep. YangYang's academy had been witch only, which Renjun didn't know was a thing. He wondered why his mother hadn't sent him there. Probably too far away.

When Professor Koon asked them if they'd worked with any of the materials in the room, Renjun had only dabbled with some of the art supplies, but YangYang had touched most everything except the art supplies. Metal, wood, feathers, ointments Renjun couldn't identify, you name it.

Renjun felt unprepared, even though, as far as he could tell, there was nothing to prepare for.

"I'll see you in mixed class?" Renjun said when he and YangYang parted ways.

"Oh, I'm not in that class. I'm specializing in creation magic. That's why I transferred here. I'll be with Koon most of those times."

YangYang was an odd one. No one else Renjun knew would have said they specialized in creation magic with pride, much less that they transferred schools for it.

Renjun realized this meant YangYang had one on one sessions with Koon. He was a little jealous.

  


* * *

  


Though everyone had said fourth year would be hard, Renjun hadn't known what they meant until now when he was in the thick of it. To him, when he'd thought of it before, the hard part had always been how to survive among the vampires. The question had always been how to not to throw himself at the nearest vampire, how to hide his secrets, and how to do it all while not tearing his hair out.

In truth, his expectations hadn't been wrong. That part was hard.

He came to every class on edge. He tried to tell himself that if Jeno and Jaemin hadn’t figured him out, no one would. He wasn’t sure he believed it. As for magic, he tied up his bindings and hoped he wouldn't get picked on. So far luck had been on his side.

Sitting in that murky pot of young adult auras felt reminiscent of middle school locker rooms. Too strong, too pungent, and sometimes sickly sweet like the tang of too much body spray. The vampires weren't middle schoolers, but young adult vampires didn't have much better control over their auras than middle schoolers over their emerging body odor. Chenle had said before that vampires matured during their late teens and early twenties, whatever that meant. Chenle hadn’t been very specific. Something about their powers finishing development, auras changing, figuring out where they stood among the others. That sounded like puberty to Renjun. Which, in Renjun’s experience, consisted of a whole lot of awkward and getting things wrong.

The difference was that if a vampire got things wrong, Renjun could suffer for it. So far, it hadn’t been as bad as he’d feared. Nothing happened. He just wasn’t used to so much aura, for so long.

He almost admitted to Donghyuck that he was right—Renjun should have hung out with more vampires before. Then Renjun thought about how smug Donghyuck would be if he said that, gritted his teeth, and told himself he could handle it.

He thought he was starting to get used to it. Or he was getting desensitized, which also worked.

All that, the magic, the auras, the being half-human, was hard, but he’d known it would be hard since the start. He hadn't thought that class would be hard too.

But class didn't care what he thought. It didn't wait for him to change his expectations.

Class was hard.

It was more than hard. Class was brutal.

Mixed class was the only one of Renjun's classes that met every day of the week. It was one hour a day except for Fridays, when it was scheduled from 5 to 10pm.

Renjun realized now that Professor Park was a saint. He hadn't assigned half as much coursework, and he didn't force them to fight each other. The coursework came mostly from Professor Kim, who wanted reading! essays! research! for every topic they discussed. "You must first gather knowledge before you can apply it in any reasonable manner," she said. "The essays are necessary for you to digest this knowledge and thoroughly glean meaning from it. Without this, anything we teach you will be useless." Jao just seemed to like pitting them against one another.

Renjun was writing at least a page a day, and in the library for unhealthy amounts of time. They all were.

Except Jaemin, who for some reason was stupidly good at essays. He was usually done in less than an hour and got the best marks out of their group. Renjun had never found him more insufferable. He’d get payback, one day.

The only justice in it was knowing that Donghyuck, Jeno, and Chenle were suffering more than he was. Donghyuck might have been a genius at magic, but Renjun was better at whipping out essays, hands down. Human middle school was good for something. All the bullshitting he had to do came in handy now.

Renjun didn't even mind having Jeno around. It was funny to see Jeno in his glasses, focusing on some passage in a book. He would squint his eyes in concentration, a crease forming between his brows and a small frown playing on his lips. Sometimes he would mumble some of the words under his breath to himself, while he tapped a pencil one, two, one, two on the side of the table.

Okay, so Renjun might have been staring. Once, or twice. (No more than twice, he swears.) But hey, it was funny.

Today, Renjun managed to finish before Jaemin for once, and Donghyuck wasn't far behind. Renjun didn't know why Professor Kim was having vampires study the uses of botanical substances for magic, but for the first time in his life he sent mental thanks to Yuta for snatching them up during first year.

"This is unfair," Chenle said. "Vampires know nothing about plant magic."

"This isn't plant magic. It's the use of plants in magic. Entirely different," Donghyuck said. "Which you should know after reading about it for, what, the past hour?"

"Right, just like you should've known that aural shielding and aural projection are entirely different."

"I can't feel auras. You can get affected by potions I make. I don't see your point."

So far, many of the topics Kim assigned were like this. Kind of random. Some topics about vampiric powers, some topics about magic, some topics about general history, some topics about humans. She seemed like the type of teacher to have a grand master plan, but Renjun didn't see much of a direction in what they were learning. He also didn't see much connection between what Kim taught them, and the fights Jao put them through. Some of the topics about vampiric powers or magic were helpful, but just as many weren't.

After that first day, Renjun learned that his and Donghyuck's fights with vampires had been a kicking off point, rather than a unique demonstration. Each class, several students were selected to face off, one vampire against one witch. A few students had been selected more than once. Donghyuck had been selected three times. Renjun couldn't tell if the students were chosen at random, or if Jao put more thought into it. Sometimes one was way outmatched by the other.

Renjun hadn't been chosen again. He was grateful for it. He suspected he'd be outmatched by anyone except Jae.

"So how is fighting each other supposed to help us work together?" Renjun muttered to Donghyuck as another pair of students lined up in the front .

Donghyuck shrugged. "Don't know. It's fun though."

"It's fun because you win," Renjun said.

Donghyuck grinned and didn't deny it. "And I always win," he said.

Renjun elbowed him.

"Hey," Donghyuck said. "You won too."

Renjun shivered, though it wasn't cold within the auditorium. The shiver ran all the way down his spine and settled in the base of his gut. He couldn't deny that he'd liked winning. He’d liked it too much.

"Barely. I just got lucky he wasn't experienced with magic," Renjun said.

Donghyuck didn't deny that either, so Renjun elbowed him again. He almost yelped, but covered his mouth with his hands just in time to muffle the noise.

Jao turned toward them. He didn't say anything, but one side of his mouth ticked up, and Renjun had a feeling he had heard the whole conversation. They both shut up.

As soon as Jao turned away, Donghyuck, who had no fear, whispered, "I can't lie to you. You didn't do anything; that vampire yielded."

"Thank you for your confidence," Renjun whispered back. It was true though. The fight with Jae had been a fluke. If it was that easy to take on a vampire, it would be in all the magic books. Like Professor Kim had said, the vampire hadn't been ready for magic, and the feeling of it had overwhelmed him.

Sometimes Renjun remembered the end of the fight. The vampire’s core so delicate, so fragile beneath the touch of Renjun's magic. The taste of power. Hunger? Sweet, sweet fear curling against his tongue, so close he could almost taste it, but not close enough, not enough… But Renjun wasn't sure anymore if it was memory or imagination.

Sometimes students were chosen to demonstrate different skills. The witch students complained that the vampires got more out of the demos. Too much of vampiric powers weren't visible. The transformations and superhuman strength and speed got their oohs and aahs, but demonstrations of auras? Not as much. They were that vampire power used to hypnotize humans, beneath the attention of a witch. Most witches couldn’t feel auras, so what was the point?

Most witches weren't Renjun.

Renjun watched the aura demos with close attention. He saw the difference between good and bad aural shielding, and realized that though some vampires couldn't feel each other at all past good shielding, he could still feel that small hint of their presence. The barest hint, like a lingering aftertaste in the back of his throat. He wondered if other humans felt like he did.

He even started to be able to feel Jao, whose shields were always up except when he was showing off his powers. Though he wasn’t sure if Jao was letting that bit of his presence show on purpose, to intimidate the other vampires. He wouldn't put that past the professor.

Just for fun, Renjun pushed himself to detect Jao before the professors entered the room. He got good enough to notice when the vampire was over a minute from the door.

He began to discern individual vampires among the auras, even ones he didn’t know well. He found the vague shifting boundaries of what was them and what was other, the subtle differences in their feeling.

Some witches were more sensitive to auras than others. Renjun saw small changes in their expressions when auras passed over them. Even witches that didn’t feel auras could be affected by them. Renjun knew this already. He knew Jeno knew too. Jeno had used that to his advantage at the party.

Soon all the witches would know. In the middle of class, while Professor Kim lectured them about witch and vampire relations in the past century, Renjun felt Jao’s aura stretch out through the students. A witch stood up from her seat and started walking forward, eyes glazed over.

Professor Kim stopped talking. She fixed one eye on Jao with a hand on her hip, a look that would probably kill anyone else where they stood. Jao didn't seem to notice.

The witches shifted in their seats, not sure what was going on. Renjun gaped. Shock rippled among the vampires, so Renjun knew they hadn’t seen it before either.

Professor Kim exhaled, a long-suffering sigh, and closed the book in her hand to wait. It was apparent they'd worked together for a while, as much as neither of them might care for the arrangement.

The witch walked up to Jao and stopped in front of him. She sat on the ground and crossed her legs.

Jao pulled his aura back. The witch in front of him blinked several times, as if waking from a dream. She looked up at him and back at the class, half-bewildered, half-mortified.

Some of the vampire students laughed. They knew exactly what had happened. Others looked on with a sick fascination. The witches muttered to each other.

Jae watched Jao and the witch in front of him with a nasty type of thoughtfulness, and turned to look Renjun in the eye. He smiled. Renjun felt an ugly surge of anger strangely mixed with desire. Try me, he thought.

Renjun couldn't read the expressions on Jeno and Jaemin's faces. Chenle looked a little sick.

"He shouldn't use his power to manipulate like that," he said.

"What's going on?" Donghyuck demanded.

"He used his aura to get her to go up to him," Renjun said.

Chenle startled. "I always forget how sensitive you are to auras," he said, more quietly. Like Renjun, he wasn't sure how much Jao could hear. "But Renjun's right. You can do that to other vampires too, but they know what you're doing at least, even if they can't resist."

“You can use your auras on us?” Donghyuck asked.

“Most can’t, but some of the strong ones can. And Jao’s always been one of the strong ones.”

"Can anyone tell me what just happened?" Jao said.

One of the vampires snickered, and Jao pointed at him. "How about you?"

"You used your aura to call her to you," he said, his eyes on the witch. He didn't hide his leer even though he was talking to Jao.

Jao smiled. "Correct."

Then his aura lashed out again, at the vampire student. The student was on his feet and moving forward before he could say another word. He pranced up to Jao, his hips swaying as he moved, while his face went slack-jawed with horror.

Renjun laughed before he could stop himself. Everyone else had the sense to go quiet.

"Renjun, keep it down," Chenle hissed, but it was too late.

Jao's aura hooked him next.

It wasn't as strong as Renjun had expected. The pull was a suggestion more than force. Jao was going easier on the witches than the vampires.

Renjun let the pull take him up from his seat and push him forward toward the other two already sitting next to Jao.

He supposed he should consider himself lucky Jao wasn't having him prance up to the front.

He thought this too soon. When he got to Jao, he was hit with the urge to dance, and worse, not just dance, but shake his hips in front of the class.

Renjun twitched. Jao smiled at him, his amused expression the same as always.

Soon he felt his body moving forward, turning to face the class. He wanted turn his hips around in a circle and shake them back and forth.

He knew he’d never think this himself, never want to do it himself, but this new inner voice was more convincing than he’d ever been.

Renjun gripped at his magic. Turning him to face his classmates had been Jao's mistake. He was sure if their eyes weren't on him, he'd already be moving.

You can't be serious, he thought.

He didn't realize he'd said it aloud, until Jao's eyes widened, and he said, "Interesting."

The pressure increased.

Just a little shake.

Just a little.

He saw Jeno lean forward, his features sharpening with interest at the increase in Jao's aura.

He would hate to give Jeno the satisfaction of seeing him humiliate himself.

Renjun felt his foot start to tap at the ground, knowing it was against his will, but not knowing how to stop it. The pressure needed to go somewhere. He needed to move. If not his hips, then something else.

His hips started to edge out backward. He forced his torso down, turning it into a bow to the class.

The desire peaked before vanishing completely. The withdrawal of Jao's aura almost made Renjun gasp aloud. A few brave souls laughed, but most were quiet. No one wanted to be the next victim. Sweet, sweet relief flooded Renjun’s body. He didn’t need to hate himself now.

Jao put a hand on Renjun's shoulder. "Good job," he said, loud enough for only Renjun to hear.

  


* * *

  


After that day, learning to resist vampiric auras became as much a part of their classes as the fights.

It pissed Donghyuck off. "How am I supposed to resist something I can't tell exists?" he said. Renjun pointed out that he was better than over half their class, but Donghyuck didn't care. He didn't like anyone telling him what to do, and them making him feel like he wanted to do it? That was worse.

Renjun had the feeling that if one of their classmates tried it on Donghyuck, Renjun would find their body in a ditch somewhere after class.

Renjun had a different problem. His awareness of the auras came as a double-edged sword. He could feel them, so he knew it was a vampire telling him what to do, but his human side couldn't help wanting to do it anyway.

Renjun didn't tell Donghyuck, but he anticipated this part of the class, in the way that someone sick anticipates medicine that tastes like shit but makes you feel better after. He didn’t want to go though it, but if the outcome could be worth it.

The other witches did gradually get better at resisting Jao's commands, though not good enough to disobey. Donghyuck said, disgruntled, after Jao got him to run a circle around the auditorium, that it was about telling the difference between their feelings and those whispered by someone else.

"I don't expect you to be able to disobey me. As you can see, even most of your vampire classmates can't. But you must be able to tell when a vampire is using his aura on you, and you must be able to offer some form of push back," Jao said. "Resisting for just a second is sometimes enough to change the outcome of a fight. And if you can resist me, you may be able to disregard the auras of lesser vampires." It was a slap in the face, telling them that their best efforts would not be enough, but it was reality.

Some of the vampires improved too, though not much. Renjun suspected Jao did it more to keep them in their place. The rules of who would give way for vampires was clear. Resistance would only go so far. The one with more power won.

Only those in the top four of the vampire class had any success disobeying him, and they'd still fail if they were caught unaware.

Out of the witches, only Renjun managed to disobey Jao that one time, and no one else knew. Renjun knew now that he'd only pulled it off because Jao had gone easy on him. He didn't go easy on him anymore.

Jao pushed Renjun with the same strength he used on the vampires.

Renjun didn't offer much resistance. He wasn't sure he could if he tried. Part of him wanted to try harder, just to see what his limits were, but the commands he'd gotten from Jao after that one time didn't involve humiliation in front of the class. It wasn't worth it.

He didn't want to stand out.

Renjun suspected Jao knew he wasn't giving his all (or worse, he just liked messing with Renjun specifically—Renjun shuddered at the thought), from the way the right side of Jao's mouth quirked up each time Renjun gave in. Jao didn't say anything to him though, so Renjun continued resisting enough to say he tried, no more than that.

Part of him felt like he was letting an opportunity go by, but it wasn't the smart, sensible part he took pride in, so he mostly ignored it.

He told himself that if he needed to practice, he could do it with Chenle.

  


* * *

  


Donghyuck had brought a fancy bottle of wine he "borrowed" from his parents' cellar back to their apartment. They broke it open the second evening in. Donghyuck poured a generous amount into his glass and swirled it around. Renjun served himself some in a mug. Donghyuck shook his head, but Renjun was too lazy to fetch another glass. Besides, he liked the mug.

"I would offer you some, but I don't think you'd appreciate it," Donghyuck said to Chenle, though they both knew if Chenle hadn't been a vampire Donghyuck wouldn't have offered it to him. Not until he'd waited long enough to annoy Chenle, at least.

"Whatever," Chenle said.

"I know, you can break out one of those blood bags you carry around and pretend you fit in," Donghyuck said.

"I don't carry blood bags around," Chenle said. "That's gross. First, they're for emergencies. They aren't very good except for the premium ones. Second, carrying them around all day is asking for them to spoil."

"Really, because I'm pretty sure I saw you with some back in intermediate."

"Better get your eyes checked then."

"Better get your memory checked. You're probably going senile."

Renjun didn't think he appreciated the taste of wine enough for Donghyuck's standards, but he wasn't going to bring it up. Soon he felt warm and nice. He leaned his head against the side of the couch cushions.

Donghyuck didn't look like he was affected, though he'd sunk a little lower into his armchair.

"So," Donghyuck said. He tilted his now empty glass in the direction of Chenle. "How does human blood taste?"

Chenle flinched. "What kind of question is that?"

"One I want to know the answer to, obviously," Donghyuck said.

Chenle looked toward Renjun, before catching himself.

Renjun waved a lazy hand. "It's fine," he said. He turned his body so he was lying on the couch facing Chenle. He felt heavy. "I'm curious too."

"You sure?"

Renjun nudged Chenle in side with his toe. "Yeah, don't worry about me," he said, more sharply than he meant to. "I want to know."

Chenle bit his lip. "Okay. Um, it's not that different from witch blood. Human blood is richer and the flavors are stronger—depending on the human and their state of mind. Sometimes their diet too. There's more of a, I don't know how to say it, mortal flavor? Not that witches aren't mortal. Ugh, I'm not explaining this very well, am I?"

"Not really," Donghyuck said, while Renjun said a lazy, "Doing great. Triple thumbs up." He was surprised it didn't bother him, but it was hard to bothered by anything when he felt so warm and floaty and nice. And it was coming from Chenle, who Renjun trusted as much as Donghyuck, and who Renjun would offer blood to without coercion if it was ever needed from him.

"Witch blood is...spicy? The more magic the spicier, but it can override the other tastes. Some vampires like that, and a lot like having variety, though most prefer human blood for their average...meals."

"No wonder the vampires can't handle me," Donghyuck said. "I'm too much magic for them. Pity."

"Oh get over yourself," Chenle said.

"I only speak the truth."

They subsided into a comfortable silence. Renjun sank into the pillows, his head getting heavier. He had the thought that he should get some water, but the kitchen felt much too far away. He put his feet in Chenle's lap, ignoring his "Hey!" of protest, and closed his eyes.

"So," Donghyuck said again, when Renjun had almost fallen asleep. Renjun opened one eye to glare at him. "If Renjun's half-half, isn't that the best flavor combo? Like you get some 'mortal flavor' and some spiciness, right?"

Now Renjun opened both eyes to glare.

Chenle squirmed in his seat. "I wouldn't know."

"I guess we can ask Jeno, or Jaemin. On a scale of 1 to 10, rate the taste."

"Don't you dare," Renjun said, the words coming to him slower than he'd like. It was almost worth getting up to put Donghyuck in the chokehold he deserved. But not quite. He sank deeper into the pillows.

"Now if I were half-human, I'd totally use it to my advantage. Hook some vampires in and bribe them with my blood to do everything I wanted."

Chenle looked distinctly uncomfortable now. "I don't think that's how it works," he said quietly.

Chenle stole a glance at Renjun, and relaxed when he saw Renjun didn't look too troubled.

Renjun threw a pillow at Donghyuck's face. It missed the chair completely. "Good thing you're not the half-human then," he said, with some bite but not much. He wanted more wine now, but that was on the table, which meant sitting up, which meant it was too far away too.

  


* * *

  


Renjun ran through the darkness of the forest. Darkness nipped at his heels, but he had no fear. Not for himself.

Two boys ran in front of him, and he chased them. They were too far ahead of him. Not matter how fast he ran, they ran faster, ever a step ahead. He almost tripped over rocks and tree roots, but he couldn't stop. He had to reach them. Branches clawed at his face.

"Turn back," he cried. "Turn back."

The boys hovered outside of the reach of his fingertips. They did not turn at his calls.

He ran and ran.

They grew farther and farther away.

Their hooded figures became blurred in his vision. From the rain, from sweat, or from tears. He didn't know. He didn't think he was crying, but he couldn't tell.

One of the figures turned back as he ran, but he didn't see Renjun. It was as if he looked through him.

At the sight of his face, Renjun stopped cold. The branches of the trees closed up like fingers in front of him, closing the boys from his view.

The ground dissolved under Renjun's feet, and he fell.

Falling, falling.

Down, down, down.

Into the abyss, and he could not fly.

The boy's face crossed his mind again and again as he fell.

  


* * *

  


Renjun woke with a start. His bed sheets were covered with his sweat. He downed half a glass of water before his racing heart began to slow.

It had to be the fast dream, even though the details were fading. Even though he only remembered the end. Only the fast dream made him feel like this.

His hands still shook around the glass in his hand.

He had never seen Donghyuck in his dreams before.

He had never seen Donghyuck so afraid.

  


* * *

  


Jao spread his arms out wide. "The moment you've all been waiting for has arrived," he said.

"Were we waiting for something?" Renjun whispered to Donghyuck, but he stopped at the tense look on Donghyuck's face. He swept the crowd. Many of them looked tense.

So he was the one in the dark. He should've known something was going on. The thrum of anticipation had been there from the beginning of class, but he'd assumed that it had been for the upcoming weekend.

Chenle took pity on him. "Renjun, do you pay attention to what happens in mixed class every year?"

"No, not really," Renjun said.

"Be quiet," Donghyuck hissed.

"You will be working with the partner or partners you get today for the rest of the quarter. We'll switch you up at the end of March, but until then, have fun."

Professor Kim began reading names off a list.

From the first couple names, it seemed like they were mostly putting together witches and vampires on a similar level. Renjun crossed his fingers. If he got Chenle, he'd pray to every one of those witch gods he didn't believe in.

He knew he was right not to believe in those gods when Jaemin, Chenle, and Donghyuck were put together.

Chenle cursed. Donghyuck said, "You should consider yourself lucky to be with me. It's not like I'm happy about this either."

Professor Kim continued down the list. Renjun thought about which of the lower ranking vampires he'd be most comfortable with. He stopped thinking about it after he realized it didn't matter. It wasn't like he had a say in the matter anyway.

"Renjun," Professor Kim said. "And Jeno."

This had to be a mistake.

Renjun met Jeno's eyes across the room. Nothing showed on his face, but Renjun thought he could feel Jeno's anger churning behind that emotionless facade. Renjun couldn't blame him. If he were number one in the class he wouldn't want to be partnered with the worst.

He'd even feel sorry for Jeno if he wasn't busy feeling sorry for himself.

Jeno's little fan club wasn't going to take this lying down.

It had to be Jao's idea of a bad joke.

And Renjun got the brunt of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> was a bit unsatisfied with how this chapter turned out, but beginnings are rough sometimes. i'd like to think that's okay


	16. partners

Renjun walked over to Jeno. His feet thudded on the ground, and his heart thudded in his chest. He felt eyes on him, glaring his way. If looks could kill, he would have died several times over already.

He didn't want to look at Jeno's face and see the disappointment that had to be there. They'd gotten along better since the new school year, if it could be called getting along better to avoid talking to each other while sitting in the same room in the same group of friends. They even said hi sometimes. Monumental progress. Not that he'd asked for it—this time last year he would never have let himself within five feet of Jeno, or even Jaemin. It was Donghyuck's fault.

Renjun forced himself to meet Jeno's eyes. He didn't see disappointment, but it wasn't much of a relief. Jeno's face was a mask, unreadable. Meanwhile Renjun couldn't hide the thudding of his heart; it was useless to even pretend Jeno couldn't hear it. It wasn't fair, but when were things ever fair with vampires? He just hoped it wasn't as loud as he thought it was, so that he could avoid the humiliation of other vampires knowing.

Renjun knew he didn't owe Jeno anything, but there was a niggling feeling in the back of his mind. If he had to label it, he'd call it guilt.

He glanced back at Chenle and Donghyuck. Jaemin had joined them, and was chattering cheerily with them both while they glared daggers at each other.

Jeno's gaze followed his to the group. His face stayed unreadable, but Renjun thought he saw his eyebrow twitch. Renjun's feeling of guilt intensified. As much as Renjun didn't want to admit it, Jeno didn't deserve this. By all rights, Jeno should have been partnered up with Donghyuck, or at least one of the top witches. He probably was wondering what he'd done to get saddled with the class fuck up instead.

"Feels like a bad joke, huh?" he said, trying to break the tension he felt.

"What does," Jeno said. He didn't seem to think it was very funny.

Renjun scuffed the ground with a foot. "This. You and me."

Jeno looked at him sideways. "Is that what you think? Why?"

Renjun almost laughed. "Come on. You're top of the class and I'm me. All the way at the bottom."

"That's what you meant? Then, yeah, it kind of does. But it's not a problem."

What else would he have meant? Jeno had to be thinking the same thing, though maybe because he was in front of all of his classmates he was trying to play the nice guy and not say it aloud.

"So it doesn't rub you the wrong way that they paired us up?" Renjun asked. Jeno's face didn't change, didn’t even twitch, so Renjun reached for Jeno's aura. He wished he hadn’t. A touch was enough to tell that Jeno wasn’t happy. Though Renjun had known Jeno would feel that way, he still shrank back, shaken—he hadn’t thought it would be so obvious. Which was stupid. Probably half the vampires in the class would have felt the same, if they cared about their standing in class. And Renjun knew Jeno cared. He tried way too hard on the stupid essays for Kim to not care.

It was just that knowing didn’t make Renjun feel better about it.

"It doesn't matter how I feel," Jeno said.

Renjun supposed it didn't matter how either of them felt.

"Let's have a good quarter then," Renjun said, trying to keep his voice as calm as Jeno's. It didn't really work. At least his heart had stopped beating hard, settling like a leaden weight in his chest. "As partners." The word tasted foreign in his mouth.

"Just try to keep up," Jeno said. "And don't get in my way."

* * *

"So I got partnered up with the top vampire in class and I think he hates me now. No, he definitely hates me now," Renjun whined, running his hands through his hair. It wasn't the first time he'd said this.

"Remind me why he hates you?" YangYang said, closing one eye while he turned the smallest screw Renjun had ever seen with an equally small screwdriver. A pile of small pieces of metal lay in front YangYang's hands, and YangYang deftly picked one of the pieces out without looking and started to screw it in too.

"Nobody wants to be paired with the bottom of the class, YangYang."

"Don't be so hard on yourself," YangYang said. "Rank is just a number. It doesn't mean anything." Renjun stared resentfully at the silver contraption forming between YangYang's hands, metal encasing a clear glass bead. It was easy for him to say when he didn't have to take mixed class.

"Didn't they care about it at your old school?"

"Hmm?" YangYang held up another piece of metal, this one the shape of a jagged teardrop, shook his head, and placed it back down. "Yeah, there's always some people who care about that. You can't let it get to you."

"I bet you weren't at the bottom."

It must have come off too bitter because YangYang stopped searching though the pile and turned to Renjun.

"I wasn't," he said, eyeing Renjun with some concern. Renjun swallowed. He didn't want to ruin the mood by being a downer so much of the time. It was one of his new year's resolutions. He'd written it down somewhere. Be a bright, perky person and smile a fake-ass smile even you don't feel like it because it'll make everyone else feel better. He'd put it underneath don't get involved with Donghyuck's bad ideas, and eat healthier.

Renjun didn't have a good track record with new year's resolutions, but the idea was to try for at least a month before calling it quits. Right?

So he drew his lips out into a half-smile and said, "Ha ha. Sorry, I'm joking. It doesn't really matter."

YangYang looked more concerned, and Renjun had the feeling whatever his mouth was doing was more of a grimace than a smile. "I wasn't at the bottom, and I wasn't at the top, but I get it," YangYang said. Casually, like it meant nothing, he added, "I've always been into this kind of magic. They used to call me the arts and crafts freak. Never mind that I don't even do art, I make machines. So I get what it's like."

YangYang didn't specify what it was, but he didn't need to. Renjun's eyes widened. "They called _you_ a—?"

YangYang waved a dismissive hand. "It was a long time ago."

"Didn't it get to you?"

"Sometimes. But I just knew this is what I was meant to be doing."

Renjun wished he had something like that, something he knew he was meant for. He didn't think that far ahead usually, and he didn't like to. When he did, he wasn’t sure there was anything ahead of him.

"Okay, well, he still hates me," Renjun said, running his hands through his hair again.

"You're going to bald early at this rate," YangYang said. "Did he say he hates you?"

"No, not exactly."

"Then how do you know?"

"I, well—I just know. He didn't say ‘I hate you, you suck’, but he didn't have to, trust me. His face was like this the whole time." Renjun made his face go slack and cold, doing more of dead fisheye kind of impression than a Jeno impression. It was probably close enough.

"Yikes," YangYang said.

"Right? This is such a pain."

"Is that why your paintings are so dark?"

"My paintings aren't dark," Renjun retorted. Renjun dipped his brush into one of the pots of paint, deliberately choosing black. He smeared it across the canvas in front of him. YangYang raised an eyebrow.

It wasn't like Renjun had painted anything gruesome. He was painting landscapes, twilight scenes. It'd been a long time since he'd painted anything, but the feeling came back to him without effort. Once his fingers touched the canvas, they itched to put something down.

"When are you going to use magic with it?" YangYang asked.

Renjun scowled. The other boy wouldn't let this go. Professor Koon hummed by her makeshift table, today a large cardboard box. She sat on the ground. She had large chunky headphones over her ears, and didn't seem to hear them. Sometimes she left in the middle of the class, and came back later with snacks for them. This first month was for "exploration", in her words. They were supposed to make something with the materials in the room, anything they wanted. It just had to have some magic in it. A month seemed like a lot of time for the task they'd been given, but Renjun wouldn't complain.

"When I'm ready," Renjun said. He had been procrastinating, maybe. Maybe he didn't want to know what would come out if he used magic again.

His magic stirred at his thought of it, restless.

He told himself he was rusty, and that was true. He hadn't picked up a brush in years. Even the feeling of it in his hand was heady.

He told himself he needed a little more time before adding magic. He didn't think about how he stayed awake at night, his blood pounding in his ears, Donghyuck's face playing against the inside of his eyelids as he ran into the darkness.

"Hope that's before end of next week," YangYang said.

"Don't worry about it."

YangYang grinned. He smiled wide, and often. Maybe that was why it was hard to believe YangYang had ever been called a freak. The smiling came natural to him, like it was easy to be happy. Like he was happy being himself. "Just looking out for you." He went back to his pile of metal scraps.

"Can we get back to my real problems? Like that I have to work with someone that hates me for the next three months?"

YangYang clicked another piece of metal in place. "So, what you're saying is you want him to like you?"

"What—no, when did I say that? I don't care if he likes me."

YangYang raised an eyebrow (again? Why did this keep happening?). "You sure talk a lot about this vampire dude for someone that doesn't care."

Renjun's eye twitched, and YangYang grinned again. Why was it that all people who smiled a lot were out to get on his nerves?

"No, seriously. Get this straight. I am not interested in him liking me. I just think it's unfair that they put us together and I get all the fallout. He doesn't like me, and half the class doesn't like me—"

"Whoa, whoa, the class doesn't like you now too?"

"They wanted to be partnered with him. Top vampire in the class and whatever. It's stupid."

YangYang made a sympathetic sound. "I don't know what it's like to be in a class with vampires, but it sounds rough."

"Yeah, it sucks." Renjun added another splash of black to the canvas. This scene was becoming night rather than twilight. Maybe he was feeling a little dark.

"Cheer up," YangYang said. "You're a nice dude. I would totally want to be partners with you if I was in the class."

Renjun imagined YangYang with his metal scraps in mixed class, ignoring the professors to rearrange them into something crazy, and snorted. "You're not even a vampire."

"Is that how it works? Well, still. Anyway, forget the rest of the class. If they don't feel your vibe, they're the ones missing out."

The corner of Renjun's mouth lifted despite himself.

"Is that a smile I see?" YangYang said. "Let's take a photo to commemorate the special occasion, my brooding new classmate."

"Oh, shut up," Renjun said, and shoved YangYang lightly.

"Hey! This is delicate work."

Renjun went back to his painting. He'd started painting Asomateus at night, the way he remembered it from many nights ago.

"Thanks for hearing me out," he said. He felt a little better. YangYang didn't respond, absorbed back into his work.

The hours passed. Renjun didn't realize they'd stayed past the end of class until Professor Koon made herself vegetable porridge for lunch and let them have some.

"How long can we stay?" Renjun asked.

"As long as you need," Koon said. "You can always stay as long as you need, as long as I'm around. You can skip the supervision next year."

Sometime in the afternoon, YangYang made a satisfied noise and sat back. He'd encased the glass bead into the body of a metal beetle. It looked identical to a real beetle, except it was grey and had 10 legs. He touched the top of its shell. Renjun felt a flare of magic and the beetle began to scuttle across the table.

"That's so cool," Renjun said. It was the first of YangYang’s creations so far not to fall apart when he jolted it with magic.

"Right?" YangYang’s smile this time showed all his teeth.

At the end of the table, the beetle made a U-turn and came directly at Renjun at three times the speed. Renjun didn't have time to react. He shrieked as it crawled up his arms, and YangYang burst into laughter.

The beetle hopped off Renjun's shoulder to the ground, and scuttled around them in a victory lap.

"Give me one good reason not to pour paint over your head," Renjun said.

YangYang flicked a thumb instead, and the beetle came at Renjun again. Renjun picked up his paintbrush, aiming for YangYang's forehead. YangYang jerked back out of reach, and leapt up from his chair. Renjun rose from his too. He chased YangYang around the room, narrowly avoiding crashing into a stack of cardboard boxes, while the beetle followed them, not fast enough to keep up.

"Be careful," Koon called after them.

"Truce?" YangYang said, when they both stopped, panting, about a meter apart.

"Truce," Renjun said, satisfied. He'd gotten black paint on the tip of YangYang's noise.

The beetle had stopped scuttling after them and tilted back and forth as it moved in slower and slower zigzags across the floor. With the sound of a balloon deflating, it stopped altogether. Its legs curled into its body, and it tilted to its side. It made a tinny whining noise that faded away. The noise almost made Renjun felt sorry for it, before he remembered it was just some pieces of metal put together with a glass bead and YangYang’s magic.

YangYang went over, picked it up, and inspected the bottom. He sighed, and tossed it in with the rest of his discarded work from the week.

* * *

"You and Renjun getting partnered up, who would have thought?" Jaemin said, his voice lilting.

"I don't know what the professors are trying to do," Jeno said.

It had been a surprise, and not a pleasant one. He didn't know what the professors were thinking, though he suspected Jao's handiwork. Doyoung had warned him that Jao liked to see those on the top brought low. Jao found it funny. He found many things funny.

Jeno didn't see why Jaemin got to escape that, but maybe Jao wanted to see the top of the class replaced by the second. Maybe that was the joke. It was like he was trying to rile Jeno up. If he was, it worked.

Even though Jaemin was his friend, Jeno didn't like to lose. Because Jaemin was that friend, the one who had seen him through thick and thin, who knew what buttons to push to drive Jeno over the edge of his patience, he especially didn't like to lose.

The most unpleasant part was that Jeno didn't feel that bad about it. He should have been furious. He knew he would have been a year ago, if he'd been set up with the bottom of the class.

But then Renjun had walked up to him, a hand in his dark silky hair, scratching his head and looking to the side, and Jeno hadn't felt that way. When Renjun's eyes raised up to his, his hand sliding to the side of his thin neck, looking defiant but at the same time sorry, Jeno's first thought had been that he was...glad? That none of the other vampires in the room had gotten to see this. That none of them could hear Renjun’s heartbeat so close.

Jeno wasn’t happy about the partnering. It'd be hard to do well, and he already worked harder than most of the other vampires in the class. He wasn't like Jaemin, who could get away with talent alone. But at the time, he’d been distracted by the way Renjun bit his lip when he was nervous.

"It'll be a challenge," Jaemin admitted. "But at least you're friends." At the last word Jaemin smiled at Jeno, his gaze intent, like he knew some secret Jeno didn't. "I have to say I'm a little worried for you though," he added.

Friends was an overstatement. "I'll make it work," Jeno said.

Jaemin's smile deepened, descending more into the territory of a smirk. "I'm not worried about that." He turned his hand over, inspecting his fingers. As usual, they were immaculate, without a hint of blood under the nails, though he'd torn into another vampire's shoulder during one of the fights in class. "You know, I get why you couldn't get Renjun off your mind. He tastes really good. Kind of unique for a witch."

Jeno jerked his head in Jaemin's direction. "He's not on my mind." He hated how he half-sputtered, but that's only because he was caught off guard by the curveball Jaemin threw.

"Really?" Jaemin smiled again, but it wasn't as friendly this time. It was more of a challenge.

* * *

After the partnerings, mixed class changed. It marked the end of Kim's essays. When this was announced, Donghyuck leapt up from his seat and crowed, "Yes. Finally." Professor Kim's mouth drew into a thin line, and Jeno thought she might try to crush Donghyuck like a bug beneath her heel, but Donghyuck as usual wasn't bothered by it. Jeno had to admire his recklessness. He'd probably die young, or get someone else killed, but he'd do it with style.

They had to sit with their assigned partners at every class now. Or stand. Renjun had hung back near his usual standing spot the first time, so Jeno had marched over and dragged him by the wrist to the seat next to his. Renjun had stared at Jeno's hand on his wrist, and stared more when Jeno forced the girl next to him to vacate her seat for Renjun. Politely, of course, saying with a sweet smile, "Isn't your partner over there?" Renjun had muttered a quick, "Thanks" that didn't sound all that grateful, but Jeno didn't miss the small noise of satisfaction he made when he settled into the chair.

Jeno had been pleased with himself until Jaemin plopped himself in the seat next to Jeno, followed by Donghyuck and a reluctant Chenle. "Someone looks smug," Jaemin had said, the whisper of a devil in Jeno's ear.

"Now class truly begins," Jao said. "Professor Kim, if you can tell them what they're in for for the rest of today.

"We will go through a couple basic exercises. Some to attune yourselves to one other, some to make up for that which you lack." Her stern eyes swept across them. "Which for this group is quite a lot."

"Don't worry, she says that every year," Jao said. Professor Kim looked like she wanted to split his head open.

"These will be basic exercises. I know many of you have upperclassman friends, but I do not recommend asking them what they've done and trying more advanced exercises yourselves. If you do so, that is at your own risk." She emphasized the word risk.

Donghyuck was already grinning. He mouthed something at Renjun, who shook his head and mouthed ‘No’. Jeno had a bad feeling.

The first exercise had them sit across from each other on the ground, cross-legged. Jeno held out his hands, and Renjun placed his warily against Jeno's. His hands were small, but warm against the coolness of Jeno's skin.

Around the room, others did the same. Chenle placed his hands on Donghyuck's, while Jaemin watched from the side and waited his turn.

"Kill me now," Chenle mumbled.

"Happy to oblige," Donghyuck said.

Chenle rolled his eyes. "I miss when things were easy and we just had to beat each other up."

Renjun closed his eyes, and Jeno did the same. Some of the partners curled their fingers tightly over one another's, like Chenle and Donghyuck who seemed like they wanted to competing on who could cause the other the most pain by squeezing too hard. Renjun's grip was loose.

That didn't matter, Kim had said. It was the skin contact that mattered. It was conducive to magic, and auras.

"Now you will try to get familiar with each other's presence. It is acceptable if you can't feel anything. Many of you won't be able to, and that is expected. Sometimes it only works with a certain partner, and sometimes it isn't possible for you. For now, just try. First, vampires send your aura over to the witch. Increase the pressure as necessary until they can feel you or until you cannot increase it anymore, then leave it there. We'll do this for the next five minutes."

Jeno let some of his aura wash over Renjun. It curled around Renjun, and suddenly Jeno's senses were full of Renjun. Renjun's hands twitched against his.

"You don't need to do that. I already feel you," Renjun said, very quietly. His mouth twisted, before he added, "I always feel you."

"I'm just following instructions," Jeno said. Then, feeling some unexpected concern, he asked, "Is it okay? Can you handle it?"

"Yeah, I can handle it," Renjun said, though his voice had gotten even smaller.

When Jeno's aura was this focused on one person, he was hypersensitive to their every move. He could hear the puffing of Renjun's shallow breaths, the almost imperceptible tightening of his fingers on Jeno's, and the more obvious increase in his heart rate. Some other heart rates increased around the room, but they fell into the background.

Somewhere in there, Renjun's fingers tightened more. Jeno felt him sag, his head falling forward.

"A minute left," Jao called, but he felt distant, as if his voice were coming through a sieve.

Jeno couldn't hear him much past the drumbeat of Renjun's heart, which had stopped increasing in speed but played loud in his ears. He wasn't sure if it was actually that loud or his focus made it louder.

Renjun sagged further forward, until his forehead rested against Jeno's chest.

"Sorry," he said. His breath smelled sweet.

"I can make it less strong," Jeno whispered back, not really sure why he was offering. He didn't really want to. He wanted to open his eyes and trace the curved line of the back of Renjun's neck. Sink in his teeth and let the blood flow. One of his canines pricked his lower lip.

"No, I can handle it," Renjun said through gritted teeth. His breath came faster now. His fingers clung onto Jeno's now as if he were a lifeline.

"Time's up," Jao said, and Jeno withdrew his aura. They opened their eyes, and Renjun jolted up from Jeno's chest. His face was a little flushed. He coughed into his hand.

"I didn't feel a thing," Jeno heard Donghyuck say. "Nice try."

"I will smack you," Chenle said. "Maybe you'll feel that."

"With those arms? Probably not."

"Next, close your eyes again, and witches send your magic over. Follow the same principle. Send more until the vampire can feel it or it's difficult for you," Professor Kim said.

A moment later the quiet of the room was interrupted by shrieking. "Ow, ow, ow, that fucking hurts." It was Chenle's voice.

Donghyuck snickered. "Sorry, can't help it," he said.

"You did that on purpose, you sorry excuse for a—"

Professor Kim's voice cut across the room. "Chenle, Donghyuck, focus. Donghyuck, keep yourself under control."

"Sure thing, professor," Donghyuck said.

Jeno closed his eyes, and waited. He felt nothing but the weight of Renjun's hands in his. Then came the faintest scent of blood—if he wasn't so close to Renjun he wouldn't have noticed. His eyes snapped open. They met Renjun's. His eyes fluttered open too, and widened when he saw Jeno staring right back at him. He chewed on his lip. "Don't say anything," he hissed, and closed his eyes again.

Jeno reluctantly closed his eyes again.

He felt nothing for a while, then a light pressure, like the touch of another vampire's aura. He had flashbacks of being challenged at the party. The feeling was more invasive than another vampire’s aura, since a vampire would know not to go so far unless he was asking for fight.

A tingle of electricity sparked starting from where Renjun's fingertips touched his skin.

“Can you feel it?” Renjun asked doubtfully. 

“Yes.”

The smallest sigh of relief.

The electricity traveled through Jeno’s veins, soft and tingling. On its own it felt pleasant, but the pressure came along with it. Jeno clenched his jaw. He willed himself to stay still as it cut through the layers of his aura like butter, the pressure increasing, trying not to feel sick. Trying to ignore the voice in his head screaming that it shouldn't have been so easy—he had practiced for this, and though he didn't know if shielding worked on witches, it still felt so, so wrong. And no, now he realized the pressure wasn't so much like an aura. It was close, but there was an edge to it, something that didn't feel like it came from the boy in front of him. Something he couldn't understand, a little curious and hungry.

It called to him. It enclosed him with a care that was cruel in its tenderness, and he thought he might drown in it, though logically he knew that couldn't happen. He thought he might drown in it, and he was scared that he wanted to.

Renjun's breath caught, and Jeno was thrown back to the surface. Felt like he was bobbing among the waves instead of sinking. Renjun's hands had tightened to a vice-like grip on his, and suddenly Jeno needed to open his eyes, damn the exercise. He did, and he saw that Renjun had leaned forward again, his face close to Jeno's, pinched with concentration, his breath shallow and fast. Jeno held onto the sensation of Renjun's tight grip, the sound of his breath, and managed to keep from sinking into that sweet, suffocating pressure until Jao again called, "Time's up."

They released each other like they'd been burned. Both of them were breathing heavily, and Renjun's hands were shaking. Jeno forced his own not to shake. Most of their classmates didn't look so worn out.

"Your homework is to do this at least once a day." Once a day? A quiet moan escaped Renjun's mouth. "We can't spare more time for it in class, but if you don't practice, you will be the ones suffering the consequences for it."

"Ugh I have to hold hands with you once a day? It's like the gods are trying to punish me," Jeno heard Donghyuck say behind him.

After that the groups with two partners switched. When Donghyuck did the exercise with Jaemin, he said, "Now this feels totally different."

Chenle pulled an eraser out of his backpack and threw it at Donghyuck. He snickered when it bounced off the side of Donghyuck's head. Donghyuck raised a hand and shouted, "Professor, my partner's trying to sabotage me."

* * *

It turned out the other exercises were literally exercises. This part of the effort, the professors said, was to make sure they stayed in shape, and that the witches got used to keeping up with the physical prowess of vampires. They did push ups, sit ups, and other exercises for over an hour. Jeno shook his head when he saw Renjun sweating. This much was easy.

Then they took them out to the side of a hill that sloped up into the forest.

"Get up to the top of the hill, and you're done with class," Jao said. "You have two hours."

The ground sloped up away from them at a 45 degree angle, and there wasn't any trodden path, just scattered rocks and clumps of grass that gradually melted into the trees. By this time, the sun had set, and only moonlight outlined the shadows of the trees.

The witches were expected to use magic, since they wouldn't be able to keep up otherwise. Even with magic, they wouldn't have the strength, speed, or stamina of a vampire, but they'd have a better chance of not dying from fatigue. Professor Kim demonstrated once how to use magic to strengthen their muscles, and to drain off some of the fatigue. The two couldn't be done at the same time.

There was a limit. Use too much, and it would be worse than not using any at all. The backlash of draining their magic beyond the breaking point could keep witches in the med ward for days.

Jeno saw a lot of confused muttering among the witches. Aside from Donghyuck and a few others, he didn't they had gotten much from Kim's demonstration. She didn't demonstrate again.

Renjun already looked about to collapse. He eyed the hill, and groaned audibly. The other bottom of class, Jae, sneered at him. "Doesn't look like you're going to make it," he said. Renjun gritted his teeth. Jeno stared at Jae, who cringed when he saw Jeno. Jae left real fast after that.

The class began running up, fanning out across the hillside. Some of them looked for shortcuts, but Jeno didn't see any way but up. He loped along beside Renjun, trying to hide his frustration as one group after another passed them.

Jaemin's group became a smudge in the distance.

One more group passed them, and Jeno couldn't take it anymore. "Can’t you go any faster?" he asked.

"I'm...trying," Renjun said, forcing the words out between breaths. Even as he spoke he was slowing down.

"Then try harder," Jeno said. Since Jeno couldn’t smell blood, he knew Renjun hadn't used magic yet. So he didn't think the witch was really trying.

Jeno pulled ahead of Renjun. Not far, but he couldn't stand the slow pace. It made his legs itch. He saw Renjun try to go faster to keep up with him (and fail), and tried to be satisfied with that as classmates that were usually no competition to him passed by, throwing sympathetic glances over their shoulders.

The distance between him and Renjun increased. Once they got deeper into the woods, they slowed down even more, avoiding tree roots and rocks jutting out of the ground. Jeno wasn't really waiting for Renjun anymore. He'd sprint ahead and stand by tree until Renjun caught up, counting down the minutes.

He stood by a tree now, waiting. He watched Renjun stumble over the ground, swaying, his pace barely more than a walk. Jeno tried not to grind his teeth as another minute ticked by. 10, 9, 8...

Then a shadow ran out of the trees and slammed into Renjun. He fell over into the dirt with a cry. Jeno ran back down, but he wasn't fast enough. By the time he got there, Renjun lay on his side against a tree, twigs tangled in his hair.

Jeno heard laughter, and a "Good luck getting up the hill now, loser" from the distance. Footsteps fading fast. Anger flared, hot and heavy in his chest, but he forced himself to kneel down beside Renjun instead of giving chase.

Renjun pushed himself to half-sitting position while Jeno inspected the damage.

"I'm fine," Renjun said. He didn't look fine. Nothing was broken, but his knees were scraped raw and a nasty gash ran halfway down his calf. Jeno reached for him, but Renjun slapped his hand away. His eyes flashed. "I said I'm fine."

Jeno stood. He offered a hand to Renjun, but Renjun ignored it.

Renjun pushed himself up from the ground. He rose to his feet, shaking. Jeno kept his arm out in case Renjun fell again, until he realized he wasn't only shaking from the hit. His whole body trembled in rage.

"We can stop now if you want," Jeno said. The words came reluctantly, but he didn't think they were going to make it up in time anyway. "If we tell the professors what happened, I'm sure they'll give us some leeway."

"No," Renjun said. The pressure Jeno had felt from him earlier rose up around him, shrouding him in a cloud. The tang of blood in the air thickened. "We keep going."

They started up the hill again. Jeno stayed by his side this time, and tried to moderate his pace, but soon found he didn't have to slow down as much. Renjun went faster than before, his face pale and grim. Branches scraped against his arms and face, but he moved forward like he didn't feel them or the pain in his legs. Or like the pain didn’t matter.

At last they reached the clearing on the top of the hill, dead last of the pack. Jeno didn't know if they'd made it in the allotted two hours. He'd stopped counting.

Jeno's stomach clenched when he saw Jaemin sitting on a rock on the top waiting for him, Donghyuck and Chenle bickering away underneath. Jaemin stretched lazily, with a cat's smile, then sat upright abruptly, the smile falling off his face. He almost fell off the rock.

Renjun stumbled over to Jeno from behind, swaying like grass in the wind, like he was about to blow away or fall over, whichever one came first. Blood ran down his leg and stained the sleeves of his shirt, and his hair was a matted mess against his head. Dirt was smeared across his clothes.

He put his hand against the rock Jaemin was sitting on.

Fierce triumph blazed in his eyes.

Then he collapsed.

* * *

Renjun didn't lose consciousness, but he didn't think his legs would move again even if he wanted them to.

A pair of strong arms hoisted him up.

His eyes fluttered open for long enough to see Jeno's face above him. He batted weakly against a chest solid enough that it had to be Jeno's, but couldn't find the resolve to tell him to let go.

"Don't take me to the med ward," he heard himself say. "Donghyuck, where's Donghyuck?"

A hand squeezed his. Familiar calluses and warmth. "I'm right here," Donghyuck said.

"You'll take care of me, right, Donghyuck?"

"Always."

He closed his eyes and fell asleep in the arms carrying him down the mountain. He felt safe there. It didn't occur to him at the time to question it.

* * *

Renjun woke up in his own bed. He felt bruised and sore, but otherwise okay. He wasn't eager to test how bruised and sore he was by moving, so he lay still for a while.

He reached for his magic, and found it the same as ever. In fact, it felt better than usual, probably satisfied that it'd gotten so much use. The stupid thing didn't know that the rest of him felt like crap.

At least that meant he hadn't gone over whatever line of using too much magic that Kim had warned them about. That was good to know.

After lying there a while longer, he realized there was something heavy weighing down on his arm. He shifted his arm, and the weight _moved_.

Jeno lifted his head from where he'd been lying by Renjun's beside, and rubbed his eyes. He blinked up at Renjun sleepily.

Renjun gaped at him, as the past night came back to him in bits and pieces. Running in the dark, tripping over rocks, Jeno ahead of him. Jae and some others throwing him against a tree. Jeno's face above him. Running again. Running on fumes and blood and magic. Tripping. Stumbling. Falling. Jeno carrying him down the mountain.

"You okay?" Jeno asked, his voice thick with sleep. Had he been here all night, just to check if Renjun was okay? Renjun looked out the window. The sun was high in the sky, which meant that, crap, he was late to creation magic class, and also that it was Jeno's version of the middle of the night.

"Yeah. You can close the curtains," Renjun said dumbly.

"S'Fine," Jeno said, and smiled. It was a sleepy kind of smile, thoughtless and quick, but Renjun realized he'd never seen Jeno smile before. Not at him. Renjun's stomach churned uneasily. He liked the smile.

In Renjun's room, with sunlight dancing against his face, Jeno's eyes glowed. He looked otherworldly. Renjun had a completely stupid irrational urge to run his fingers down Jeno's face, just to commit the moment to memory.

"Thanks for carrying me back," Renjun said. "You didn't have to stay."

Jeno's expression became more guarded. "Did you not want me to?"

"No, I don't mind," he said, and found that oddly, he really didn't. He was quiet for a while. More softly, he said, "Thanks for staying."

"We're partners," Jeno said. Renjun blinked. Jeno was more responsible about this whole partners thing than Renjun had expected. Then again he had tried really hard on those essays…

Jeno turned, and called out the door, "Donghyuck, he's awake."

Donghyuck appeared in the doorway, wearing an apron with the words "it’s magically delicious" in bold black font across the front. He twirled a spatula at Renjun. "You're alive. Great. Now I can kill you for real for using up half a fortune of my healing balm. That shit is expensive. My parents gave it to me for emergencies, and it was supposed to last all seven years."

"It's lasted half that time so far," Renjun pointed out.

Donghyuck raised an eyebrow, unamused. "I'll take that as a 'Thank you Donghyuck, my lord and savior, for bestowing my lowly self with a great gift he does not deserve'." Donghyuck smiled sweetly. "In other words, you owe me."

Renjun didn't even find the energy to groan. Owing Donghyuck had become something of a fact of life.

"I have a lot of ideas on how you can make it up to me. But first, pancakes."

Renjun actually groaned then. "You know I said I was sick of pancakes."

"Trust me, Renjun, you haven't had mine."


	17. pride

In the days that came, it felt like that morning was a fever dream. He'd woken up with Jeno by his side, and sat at their dining table eating pancakes with Donghyuck while Jeno watched them. The pancakes weren't as good as his mom's, but they were different, and that had been good too. They hadn't talked about what had happened the night before or anything serious. They had just talked. Renjun didn't really remember about what.

Even after Renjun had managed to convince them both that he was fine, all healed up and good to go courtesy of Donghyuck's healing balm, even after he left to be very late to creation magic, the haze had floated with him.

The thing was, dreams never lasted very long.

Later that day, Jeno and Renjun found out they were the only group not to make it up the hill in two hours.

When Jao spoke, Renjun looked at Jeno’s face because he was a fool. Jeno wouldn’t look at him.

* * *

Chill night air rushed past Renjun, ruffling his hair. It was cold, and he liked that. The cold numbed him. It dried the blood on his arms, and froze the thoughts in his mind.

He stood with Jeno at the top of the hill by the rock Jaemin usually lounged on while he waited for them. Today Jaemin wasn't there. His parents were in town and he'd left to go meet them. Donghyuck had left early for his music club and Chenle had blanched at the idea of waiting by the dark creepy top of the hill alone so he'd left too.

"Aren't you a vampire? How can you be scared of the dark?" Renjun had hissed before they started on their way up.

"It's not the dark that's scary, it's the being by myself waiting near the forest and who knows what's in there," Chenle had said.

"Okay, sure," Renjun had said.

"I'm serious, being up there gives me the creeps," Chenle had said, and Renjun hadn't really believed him, but he couldn't blame Chenle for finding an excuse to head out early. He wouldn’t have wanted to wait up every time either.

Renjun had thought that night was hard, but he should have known it was just a precursor to the bleak future. Every session of mixed class now ended with a run up the hill. The classes themselves started to expand beyond the lectures and the impromptu fights and aura resistance training into something more familiar to Renjun from the past three years. Read—learning cool magic and bombing at it.

The witches and vampires would split up with their respective professors for a good part of class. Professor Kim started to teach them simple defense and attack spells. How to put up a basic barrier, how to create a flash of light that would blind, how to toss around darts of fire. Renjun didn’t dare use blood with the vampires so close, so his magic fizzled out at his fingertips most of the time. His only consolation was that most of his classmates couldn’t really laugh at him. Other than Donghyuck, few picked up each new skill with ease.

Even if he didn’t care about the notice of the vampires, Renjun was held back by fear that he wouldn’t have enough to make it through the end of class. Each small bit of magic he lost during class made getting up the hill at end harder.

No one had tried anything again since that night, since Jeno kept an eye out now. Renjun should have been grateful for that, but instead he mainly thought about the whisper spoken in passing, "Heard you got carried down the hill like a princess." And when he turned his head, he hadn't seen who said it.

He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw hurt, and ran. He let his blood run down his arms, running into enough branches to get the scrapes to make it believable. Sometimes if it wasn't enough he'd trip and fall. That wasn't much of an effort. These days he felt so tired that it was easier to let himself tip over into the jagged embrace of dirt, stone, and weed than to hold his trembling body up and keep moving. The harder part was getting up again after he'd fallen.

Jeno had tried to help him up a couple times, but Renjun shoved his hands off.

"Are you serious?" Jeno would say, but Renjun would snarl, "Yes, does it look like I need your help?"

Jeno wouldn't respond to that.

Jeno probably thought Renjun was clumsy as hell. Renjun didn't care.

What he cared about was that they were never last again because of him.

There were times he didn't think he'd make it, when his vision swam before his eyes and his breathing turned ragged, and the warm stickiness of his own blood was the only sensation he could hold onto to keep from dropping where he stood. But when he reached the end, and he saw the few remaining stragglers pull in, Jae among them, his eyes bright with hatred, Renjun knew it was worth it. It was so worth it.

It wasn't enough though. Jeno didn't say anything, but Renjun could feel the frustration seeping off him in waves each time their classmates passed them. He saw the way Jeno placed his hand on that rock that had become their unofficial finish line each time they reached it, more and more like he wanted to crush it each time. How he looked up at Jaemin and couldn't really smile.

Renjun wanted to say sorry. He wanted to tell Jeno he only had to endure a few more months of this, then he'd be back in his place at the top. No sweat. Tell him, sorry it's like this. Grin to make it half a joke. Sorry. My fault. It'll be over soon!

But the words wouldn't push their way past his lips.

A tremor ran through Renjun's body, only half from the cold. He and Jeno did their daily required exercises right after the run up the hill so that they didn't have to meet up again for it, and his hands always shook in Jeno's now.

For a while Renjun told himself it would get easier.

It didn't.

The run up the hill felt longer each night. The tremors that he wrote off the first couple times used to run only through his fingers. Now they coursed through his whole body after they made it to the top, and sometimes he needed over a minute for them to stop. He couldn't tell Jeno's hands were cold when he held them, so his own must have been just as cold. Even the exercises didn't get easier. Jeno's aura felt more overpowering each time—more tempting, really, but he refused to think that—and his own magic flickering, dim, barely there.

Renjun stopped telling himself it was going to get easier.

He just had to last.

* * *

When Renjun got home, the first thing he did every time was shower. He scrubbed off the dirt and everything else before he got too tired to do it.

Donghyuck was waiting for him in the living room. "You said you weren't going to use blood for magic anymore," he said, eyes dark and accusing.

"I never said that," Renjun said.

Donghyuck's eyes darkened further but Renjun couldn't feel sorry about it. He only felt tired. Tired to his bones, about to fall over.

"Are you even trying not to?"

Renjun couldn't bring himself to lie.

* * *

The shove wasn't accidental. At first Renjun thought it was. Actually at first he hadn't realized he had been shoved, until he stumbled forward and almost walked into Jeno. He stood there blinking, wondering why he was a step ahead of where he'd been.

Jeno had turned at the movement, his face drawn tight. Renjun saw the words "Watch it" hovering there on his lips, but instead he raised his eyes to the sky, took a deep breath, and reached out a hand to steady Renjun.

Renjun took a quick step to the side to avoid the hand, not sure why at first he did that. His mind felt foggy, slow.

Then he remembered the whisper in his ear.

Jeno blew out a breath again, more sharply this time. He crossed his arms and looked to the side. "Can you stop being so...?" he said.

Renjun fought down a bizarre urge to laugh. Oh, he was making Jeno mad. Maybe he should add that to his list of skills he was actually good at, since it seemed to be getting shorter all the time. He was sorry about that too. Not really. A little.

"Stop what?" he said innocently.

By the time he got around to thinking that maybe someone had shoved him, it was halfway through class. The timing didn't matter though. When he scanned the class he saw them easily. His former enemies, Joowon and Eunha, his potential new enemy, Jae, and a couple others all clumped together. One of them stared back at him and whispered into another one’s ear. So they were watching him.

Or maybe the witches were watching Jeno, and he was the collateral of their attention.

This was a good time to show he was above it all, and didn't care about their pettiness. He turned back to the lecture.

Then he turned back to them.

He lifted a hand and waved.

* * *

Jeno rubbed a hand over his face. He was trying to be patient, but if he had to see Jaemin's gloating face one more time, he was going to lose it. Jaemin wasn't even trying to gloat—he knew how much Jeno cared about his place in class, which was going down by the day, by the hour—but he couldn't help it.

Jaemin liked to win. Jeno understood because he was the same way. Jaemin didn't say anything because he wasn't going to be mean about it, but that apologetic half smile he flashed at Jeno each time he and Renjun made it up the hill really, really made Jeno want to hit something.

Renjun swayed on his feet. He had just half-tripped over a tree root and slammed into the side of the tree. He swayed again, righted himself, and swayed in the other direction. Jeno used to think he was doing it on purpose, but now he wasn’t sure. Half the time Renjun’s eyes weren't focused. This time he stared at the tree with actual surprise, like he hadn't seen it pop up in front of him and was wondering where it came from. Red welled up from a scratch on his forehead.

"Do we need to stop?" Jeno asked, barely keeping the edge out of his voice.

Renjun seemed to notice it anyway. He jerked himself upright. "No. It's...fine. Keep going."

His face was pale, and his words trailed off into silence, his eyes losing focus again. But he started going again, shaking off any attempt of Jeno's to offer him an arm. Jeno fought the urge to kick something. It'd go faster if Renjun let him at least help him up when he fell. It'd probably go faster if Jeno carried him the whole way.

Jeno’s falling position in class flashed before his eyes, accompanied as it always was now by a ghost of Jaemin’s smile.

Each day, Jeno got this much closer to snapping at Renjun, but he saw that pale, drawn face, and something held him back.

Sometimes he thought that even a witch shouldn’t lose so much blood.

So they ran on, Renjun barely on his feet, and Jeno barely containing himself, cursing Jao, cursing Renjun, cursing his bad luck, and cursing the heady scent of blood around them.

* * *

Each time at the top of the hill, it went like this.

"Let's get it over with," Renjun would say, shoving one hand into Jeno's. It would be shaking. It was always shaking now. Sometimes his whole arm would be shaking, but neither of them would mention it, like they couldn’t feel it. Renjun would look straight at Jeno. Determined and wary. No matter how many times they did this, Renjun was always wary.

Sometimes Jeno thought Renjun looked at him like he was a predator.

It stirred something ancient inside of him, because at his core it was what he was, though not to witches. He was hunger and fangs, made to sink his teeth into flesh, to draw blood.

Jeno would send his aura over Renjun, and when he did for the briefest moment Renjun would stop shaking. He doubted Renjun noticed. It probably wasn't the best idea to do their exercises while Renjun was exhausted, but he was the one who insisted on it.

It was the only time Renjun would sag forward toward Jeno, his other hand gripping at Jeno's shirt. And he was always, always bleeding.

Mumbling something about, "Let's make this fast, okay?"

Sometimes Jeno thought he looked like prey.

Renjun's fingers would flex and curl. Sometime in there his fingers would tighten and dig into Jeno's chest, and a moment after that he'd push himself back from Jeno, stumbling backward. Sometimes dropping Jeno's hand, which should have weakened the connection, but somehow Jeno knew it didn't make a difference. Jeno would cut off his aura when that happened, even if the five minutes weren’t up, even though he didn't like to cut corners on assignments. He saw Renjun's feverish eyes, mouth slightly parted, and it wasn't like anyone would know.

Then Renjun would gather himself and take Jeno's hand again, and push his own magic at Jeno without waiting for Jeno to say it was okay. Touch and go. A tingle against Jeno's fingertips, and the vaguest sensation of pressure at the edges of his perception, never so close as the first time, never anything close to a threat. Jeno almost forgot it was ever anything more.

* * *

"I'm worried about you," Donghyuck said.

"Why? What for?" Renjun snapped back. Donghyuck's eyes widened, and Renjun tried to soften it with a grin. "There's nothing to worry about."

Renjun knew it was too late, he'd said too much, been too snappy, but he didn't want to hear the whys and whats of Donghyuck's worries, hadn't wanted to know that Donghyuck was worried about him.

"There is. Nothing to worry about," he repeated.

* * *

"You've been through a lot of witches this month," Jaemin said, as Jeno grabbed his jacket and headed out the door.

"Like you're one to talk," Jeno said. Jaemin wasn’t wrong, but he was not about to admit it to someone whose track record was much longer and more illustrious than his own.

"You’re not into witch blood. Now you’re out finding a witch every night?" Jaemin said, raising an eyebrow. “You haven’t fed on any humans for a while, not even last time we went into town.”

"I just wasn't feeling it," Jeno said, and left.

He found the witch he'd been taking blood from the past couple days at their usual spot, an alleyway not too far outside Asomateus. He knew he should feel bad about making someone come all the way over just to get their blood sucked in some dingy alley, but he was too busy sinking his teeth into the witch's neck.

Every night just after getting back from mixed class the hunger would strike Jeno so hard he'd be on his way out before he thought twice. He'd gone through as many witches in the past month as he usually would in a year, taking them for a couple days, a day even maybe, and dropping them just as fast. He didn't try to pretend it was anything other than a craving for blood, no sweet words, no kisses, nothing to give them but the promise that he would take what he wanted and leave when he didn't want it anymore.

Still, it wasn't hard to find witches willing to give him what he wanted.

The witch's blood coursed over Jeno's tongue.

Jeno enjoyed the way he bent back, giving Jeno easier access to his neck, but the taste of his blood was too electric, not rich enough. This month, something in Jeno had craved this spicy taste in a way he never had before. That was why he'd gone through witch after witch, but all of them didn’t taste right, and it frustrated him almost as much as his increasing thirst.

The witch's fingers dug into Jeno's chest, and suddenly Jeno had visions of a different boy, a different witch, who also dug his fingers into Jeno's chest every day. A witch with darker hair and wariness, whose touch sent an involuntary tingle down Jeno's spine because half the time they touched he was shoving magic down Jeno's throat.

Jeno drew back, and the witch lifted his head, chest heaving but eyes hopeful, Jeno helped the boy stand, and said, "That's enough. I don't want to see you again."

The witch made a choking noise and whatever hope he had vanished like flame blown out by the wind. He grabbed his backpack, fallen to the probably grimy ground of the alleyway, and dashed out holding the pack against his chest.

"Thanks," Jeno called after him, because he felt a little bad. He was usually more of a gentleman.

He probably shouldn't have said anything, because the witch recovered enough to shout back, "You're a jerk, you know that?"

* * *

Renjun seemed to grow more haggard day by day. Jeno couldn’t help noticing how pale and withdrawn he was, even when he was with his friends. Going up the hill and going through their exercises became a rote motion. Renjun didn't speak much, and said, "Huh?" sometimes when Jeno spoke to him.

Sometimes it looked like he'd fade away, a wisp into the night.

* * *

Even YangYang could tell something was off, which was saying a lot since he had known Renjun for less than a month.

"Are you getting thinner?" YangYang asked. "I'd swear you're getting thinner except I don't think that's possible."

The metal beetle beside YangYang flicked its antennae as if in agreement. This one had lasted a full day so far and was still running around, getting underfoot. It had managed to get into the white paint and track it up Renjun's black jacket. Renjun had threatened to crush it multiple times. Each time, YangYang would scoop up his beetle defensively, saying, "She didn't know it was wrong. I can't believe you would think about killing her for the sake of your clothes."

"It"—and Renjun made sure to say it—"isn't alive."

To be honest, he didn't have the heart to do it. It was an automaton, a hybrid of metal, glass, and magic that would only stay running until the magic ran out, but it felt alive no matter what he said.

YangYang didn't know that though, and he'd cover his beetle with his hand. "Don't listen to the bad man over there. He's only jealous."

"Jealous? Of what?"

"That she is a perfect creation, while you obviously have some issues."

That hit a little harder than it should have.

"You are thinner," YangYang said, eyeing Renjun's exposed collarbone.

Renjun tugged at his collar and shook his head. "I'm just tired. School's getting to me."

"Yeah, you sure look tired," YangYang said. And because he was truly an unsympathetic soul, he added, "And our assignment is due on Friday. Two days left, good luck."

"And you're done?" Renjun said with a snort.

YangYang held out his beetle and let it run up his arm to its shoulder, where it perched, its antennae quivering. Renjun swore it almost looked proud of itself. "I have been since yesterday."

Renjun didn't know how YangYang was so confident the beetle wouldn't run out of juice before Friday, but he obviously knew his magic better than Renjun did.

"Ugh, I'm going to do it today. I was going to do it now, before you started distracting me," Renjun said.

"Oh, okay, so it's my fault. Sorry, sorry," YangYang said. He pulled out a bar of chocolate from his bag and bit off a large chunk, crunching it between his teeth. He held it out at Renjun, pointing the end with teeth marks and saliva at him. "Want some?"

"No." Renjun turned back to the blank canvas in front of him.

YangYang took another, larger bite. "Your loss."

Renjun picked up his brush. It did have to be today. That would give him one more day as a backup if anything went wrong, or if, as he feared, it didn’t actually work.

He closed his eyes. He tried to focus, but everything felt too loud, too close. The sound of YangYang crunching on chocolate, the rustle of papers as Koon wrapped another of the jars she'd been putting into packaging paper all morning, the tick tick tick of the clock.

He reached down inside himself, finding his magic. He just had to think of it going into the brush. Just like that time at Placements. But it was hard to put himself back there, hard to remember what he had felt with the bright lights blaring in front of his vision and the curl of fear drawing up hard from deep within his gut.

His magic hummed, the dark lines on its surface expanding and receding with his heartbeat. It was comforting to see that despite how he felt, his magic stayed the same.

It was hard to remember feeling good. There was a dull throb in the back of his head when he woke up most days now, and even after downing glass after glass of water, he felt dry as a bone, shivery. He dreaded going to mixed class, dreaded trying whatever new spell Kim demonstrated that day, dreaded going up the hill, dreaded feeling Jeno's aura pooling around him, familiar now, almost comforting, almost sweet in that familiarity. He hated that he could feel that way. He knew better.

Dreaded the most the gazes on him when he made it to the end, Jeno's disappointed and doing a poor job of hiding it, Jaemin and Chenle's sympathetic, not really a far cry from pity, and Donghyuck's accusing.

Renjun peaked open one eye, looked to the side, and saw YangYang leaning forward in his chair, one leg propped over the other, his eyes fixed on Renjun's brush hovering over the canvas.

"I can't do this if you're watching me like that," Renjun hissed.

YangYang sighed. "Okay fine." He scooted his chair around. "My back's turned now, good enough for you?"

"It better stay that way," Renjun said. "Or else." Though he had nothing to back that threat up with, so YangYang just laughed.

Renjun closed his eyes again. YangYang wasn't chomping on the chocolate anymore, which helped. That meant either he'd put it away, or he'd finished it. Renjun didn't know how YangYang could eat so much sugar and stay a functioning human being (well, witch being. Whatever), and he had half a mind to tell him so—

He was getting distracted again.

Renjun tried harder to focus. He grasped a thread of concentration, and before he could lose it, he plunged into his magic.

Let his blood flow, just a little, and for the first time since Placements, told his magic to come and be what it would.

He shuddered, caught half in a memory as his magic crept up through his veins. He was thrown back to when he'd first discovered his magic. An accident with paints and light, and a half-formed vision he couldn't understand. His mother running up the stairs, and she never ran, covering the canvas with a cloth before he could finish, and prying the brush from his fingers. Telling him he had to leave, there was a school for people like him, she wished he didn't have magic but there was no choice now so he had to go. Throwing out his paints and brushes in the trash. Not answering his "Why? I don't understand", saying that she didn't want him to understand.

But his mother hadn't thrown out the painting. There was a night when he snuck down into the basement, unafraid of it, because what was there to fear? He’d spread his fingers over the canvas, filled with a strange sense of wonder. Maybe somewhere inside himself back then he was secretly glad that he had magic and would learn how to use it. That was, until he got to the academy and saw what he had painted spread out before his eyes. Fear had struck him then instead of wonder, and he couldn’t explain why.

He hadn't touched a brush since, not until Placements. He hadn't felt like it since his mother threw his away. A part of him couldn't detach it from his homesickness.

Renjun hadn't realized how much he missed the act of putting a brush to canvas until he'd picked it up again this past month. As his magic flowed out of his fingertips, the feeling twisted into something bittersweet.

An image rose unbidden in Renjun’s mind, and his hand began to move. Like the past couple times, the image came to him blurry, made of unclear blobs and dashes of emotion. It would solidify as he worked, never completely clear until the end, as if he weren't the artist but rather a conduit.

Soon, in his mind's eye, he saw two boys again. He almost stopped, shaken, but the magic kept coming, pushing his hand into motion. He couldn't stop.

His fingers tightened around the brush. It couldn’t be that painting from Placements again. Not again. And if it had to be again, not Donghyuck.

Some god answered his prayers, because as the vision solidified, he could tell it wasn't the same. Fear didn't wrap around his heart like it would devour him. There wasn't much of a feeling really. A bit of warmth and comfort, a slow pulse of joy.

He saw that rock Jaemin always lounged on. No, not that rock. A very similar rock on a similar hill, though the distance from the school and the angle of the mountains weren’t the same.

His magic stopped flowing, the vision came to an end, and his sight cleared. He put the brush down.

He hadn’t used much blood this time, and he barely noticed the warmth against his arm. He'd gotten used to the feeling.

He was shaking again. He put it down to relief. He noted with annoyance that YangYang had already turned back around.

"Huh," YangYang put a finger under his chin, and perused the painting with his best imitation of an art critic. "So magic makes you a narcissist I see."

Renjun had painted himself on the rock, leaning back on his arms, wind blowing through his hair. Next to him sat Donghyuck, the wind blowing his hair in his face. Donghyuck was smiling, his hands spread wide like he was telling a story of some great exploit he'd managed. The Renjun in the painting smiled back at him, a half-smile because he wasn't about to indulge Donghyuck's stories so easily, but it would soon become a full one. They felt so happy, carefree, like nothing in the world mattered but whatever they were talking about.

YangYang's voice came from his right side again. "Wow, it feels so peaceful."

"Yeah," Renjun said. YangYang sounded kind of awed, which was weird, but he did say he couldn't draw for shit.

"No, I mean, it makes me feel peaceful when I look at it. And happy. Really happy. Is it just me?"

Renjun turned and saw YangYang looking at the painting, a stupid grin spreading on his face like he couldn't help it. Renjun couldn't help grinning back. "Yeah, that's how I feel too."

"Your magic," YangYang said, still staring at the painting, "could be awesome. Like think if you could make everyone happy just by giving them one of these."

"That doesn't sound very cool."

"Uh, world peace doesn't sound cool to you?"

Renjun scoffed. "Talk about an exaggeration."

YangYang turned to Renjun, uncharacteristically serious for a half-frame of time. "Happiness is totally cool," he said. "Isn't that all we're really looking for?"

Renjun turned back to the painting. The Renjun in the painting seemed happier than he'd felt in a while. Maybe that said something about him.

He squinted. There was something there in his own painted eyes. Flecks of orange-yellow were mixed in with the brown.

* * *

They didn't fall further behind, or get ahead. A solid place in class rankings that wasn't dead last, but was close enough that the difference didn’t matter to Jeno. He tried his best not to think about it.

Their rankings were announced at the end of the second week after the partnerings, and of course they no longer had individual rankings, just a shared one.

Bottom five.

Bottom.

Five.

"I'm sorry," Renjun croaked that day at the end of their exercises. It came out quiet but harsh, like he'd had to force it out.

It shocked Jeno into silence for a while. "It's okay," Jeno said, though it wasn’t.

Renjun turned to the side, his eyes downcast. "It's just two more months," he said.

Jeno stared at Renjun for a while. He wanted Renjun to look at him so he could understand where this was coming from. Renjun wouldn't look at him.

* * *

Professor Koon looked over their completed assignments. She was more serious than usual.

After YangYang presented his beetle, he shifted from foot to foot, and the beetle tapped its antennae on the ground like it'd caught some of his nerves. She ran a finger down its back, and that seemed to calm both it and YangYang. It made a pleased whirring noise. She placed it back down on the table.

She went over to Renjun's painting, and stood in front of it. She became very still. Only her eyes moved over the painting.

After what felt like a long time, she came back to stand in front of them.

"Please sit." Her eyes rested on YangYang, then Renjun. When she was sure both of them had their full attention on her, she spoke. "You have both passed the first test."

"This was a test?" Renjun blurted out. "You said there were no tests."

Her gaze softened. "I'm sorry Renjun. Perhaps I wasn't clear. There are no formal tests, but this class will test you in the ways that matter. Test the limits of your abilities, and the strength of your mind. Everyone I choose for this class has the makings of a gift, but Placements alone wasn’t enough to tell me what kind of gift you have, or if you are ready to use it."

She turned and started toward the curtain that covered the hallway into the back of the hut. "Follow me," she said.

They trailed her as she pushed back the curtain and led them into the back. They passed one room after another. "Healing balms," she said, pointing at jars of a clear substance, surrounded by powders and objects Renjun didn't recognize. Another room was stacked floor to ceiling with training squadron uniforms on one side. On the other side one uniform was pulled over a rack, and a saw had been used to cut it halfway through. Other rooms held amulets, poisons, living animals that were too quiet.

When they reached the end of the hall, Professor Koon stopped. "I'm sorry for bringing this on you so suddenly. You are the ones I've chosen, but now you must make a choice. It is time for you to decide to continue with this class or not."

"Continue with the class?" That was a choice?

"The creation magic students have always supported the training squadrons. That is the truth of this class," Professor Koon said. "We use our gifts to help them succeed in the field, to give them tools, guidance, whatever they can't get from their skills alone."

Renjun stared at her. He felt like he wanted to sit down. If this was a dream, it was turning into a very weird one.

"We don't all want to use our gifts. Using a gift can be a curse, though I will do my best to ensure it doesn't become that for either of you. If you continue with the class, using it won't be a choice. You'll have to, whenever you're called upon, and whatever you do will be for the good of the training squadrons."

Renjun vaguely registered YangYang's lack of surprise. YangYang must have known about this, and he hadn't said anything. Renjun would get him back for that.

“I’ll give you both a moment to—”

“I want to continue with the class,” YangYang said, almost thrumming with eagerness. "Renjun wants to too, right, Renjun? There's no way you can't. Think about how cool this is. Think about the awesome things we could make that could be used in missions. We could be helping people."

Renjun couldn’t bring himself to share YangYang’s enthusiasm. His throat felt dry. "What if we choose not to?" he asked.

He ignored the shock that flitted across YangYang's face. For her part, Koon didn't look surprised. "Then we send you back to general magic class. There's no shame in that, if that's what you want. We have to bind you to secrecy either way, but other than that you'll continue with class the same as any other student."

"Renjun, there’s no way you want that," YangYang said.

Renjun thought about the past year in Park's class, struggling to get by. He thought about the familiar weight of the brush in his hand, and the bittersweet tug in his gut. It wasn't hard to choose. "I'll stick with the class too."

YangYang covered his mouth with his hands theatrically, then lowered them to reveal a smirk. “Don’t act like you would have chosen anything else,” he said.

"Wouldn't want to leave you alone here," Renjun said.

"I would be lonely by myself."

They both signed a paper handed to them by Koon, YangYang's jagged scrawl next to Renjun's series of loops.

* * *

Jeno sat across from Doyoung in his brother's living room on the top floor of Asomateus. Doyoung had moved out to live with his pair the previous year, but this year he'd moved back. They didn't talk about why.

"How's fourth year been so far? How are mixed classes?" Doyoung asked.

"They're...fine," Jeno said.

Doyoung chuckled. "They're always hard at first. Did you know the first day I wanted to throw Jaehyun out the window?"

Jeno's head jerked up. One because he didn't know Doyoung and Jaehyun had ever not gotten along, and two because it was the first time since Doyoung had been found that he'd mentioned Jaehyun on his own.

"How are you?" Jeno asked carefully.

"I'm good. Doing better than I have been for a long time," Doyoung said. Jeno glanced at him, observing every change of facial expression, wary for the twitch of an eyebrow, a darkening of his gaze, a fraction of a second of hesitation, his brother's tells. Doyoung didn't hesitate. He sounded like he meant it, and he was letting enough of his aura show that Jeno could feel that he meant it.

Jeno tried not to seem too relieved—he didn't want to pressure Doyoung into faking he was okay. But it was hard not to show how glad he was that Doyoung seemed fine for the first time in a long time. The shadows under Doyoung's eyes hadn't gone away completely, but aside from that, it felt like the brother he knew was back.

"Who's your partner?" Doyoung asked.

"The witch you met last time. Renjun."

Doyoung's eyes widened almost imperceptibly when he heard the name. Jeno hadn't been sure Doyoung would remember Renjun, but he clearly did.

Doyoung raised an eyebrow. "I thought the two of you were friends?"

Right, Jeno had said that. Jeno winced internally. He wasn't good at lying, and especially not to Doyoung. "We are, sort of. More friends of friends. I mean we are friends too, but—" Jeno rushed on, feeling like the more he talked about it the more he'd dig himself into a hole. "But we don't work well as partners."

Doyoung nodded. "That happens."

"He's the bottom of the class," Jeno said, without meaning to, the weeks getting this close to tearing his hair out manifesting on its own. And here he thought he was going to check in on how Doyoung was doing, not complain about himself.

"They partnered you with the bottom of the class? That's ridiculous," Doyoung said indignantly, which made Jeno feel a little better.

"I just don't know what I'm supposed to do to make this work better."

Doyoung shook his head, still indignant. "The professors have gone to new lows this year. If it helps, the first partnering counts the least toward your final class rank and for the next ones you have more choice." Doyoung rested his chin on his hand and cocked his head at Jeno thoughtfully. "You should bring him over sometime. Since I have some experience, maybe I can help the two of you out."

Jeno was surprised at Doyoung’s offer. It sounded a bit like cheating, but he knew Doyoung would never condone that. He nodded.

“Maybe next time,” he said.

* * *

A foot shot out in front of Renjun and he tripped over it. He went sprawling against the ground to the sound of laughter.

He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, and looked up to find himself surrounded. Jae, Joowon, Eunha, and three other witches from his year stood in the circle around him, Jae at the front.

"Your friends aren't here to help you now," Jae sneered.

He tried to stand, but at that moment a tremor chose to run through his body, and he felt the world spin. By the time it righted itself, they were laughing again, thinking that he had been scared into shaking.

He tried again to stand. This time his body listened, but as he rose, Jae stepped forward and shoved. Even a weak vampire was powerful compared to a witch. Renjun fell on his ass. Hard.

"And you're so afraid of me you need six of you here," he said.

Their faces contorted, and even Jae's sculpted vampire face twisted into something ugly. When he raised a foot, Renjun realized he was stupid. He'd broken his own number one rule—don't piss off the vampire. Even if the vampire was a pathetic dickwad.

Renjun needed to get out of the way, but he knew he wouldn't be fast enough. They were all around him. He curled in on himself, covering his head. He'd protect his face, at least. They laughed.

Blood roared in his ears.

He thought about using magic, but what could he do? Six of them and one of him, and if he bled now with Jae around worst case it'd do nothing but make the vampire hungry. If he bled now he wouldn't have enough juice for later when they had to go up the hill, and he'd hold Jeno back again. If he could run at all after this.

The kick never came. "What's going on?" Renjun heard a voice say from the distance, familiar even from there, and the group jolted.

They ran from him. "You got lucky this time," one of them called over his shoulder as they left.

Renjun uncurled himself up to a sitting position, not sure if his shaky legs were ready to take his weight.

"Jeno," he said, as Jeno stalked into view.

"What happened?" Jeno said, his eyes on the receding backs of those walking away, flickering between them as if he was marking them into his memory.

"I fell," Renjun said.

"Someone pushed you," Jeno said.

"No, I tripped and fell."

"Someone tripped you."

A lie was halfway out Renjun's mouth before he realized Jeno would know. He forced himself to stand up instead. It bought him some time.

"One of them?"

"Just drop it, Jeno," Renjun said. Jeno's jaw set in a way Renjun had come to recognize as stubbornness. "Why do you care?"

The question stunned Jeno enough that he went quiet. Renjun patted him on the shoulder, putting more strength into it than he felt. "It's not your problem. Don't worry about it," he said, and walked past Jeno down the hall.

* * *

The paradigm shifted again. Renjun wasn't ready, but maybe he never would have been.

"Today we're going to have our first test," Jao said, clapping his hands together as they faced the hill they always ran up. He looked pleased, which Renjun already knew meant it was going to be bad. Jao pulled a silver orb out of his pocket, the silver swirling like molten lava across its surface. "We've placed orbs like these all over the hillside, just enough for half of you."

When Renjun looked at the orb, he a strange pull at the base of his gut. He saw Donghyuck's eyes narrow, so he knew Donghyuck felt something too. Chenle, Jeno, and Jaemin didn't react.

Professor Kim held up an identical orb. "This orb calls to magic, as I'm sure you can all tell."

With two of them out, the pull on his gut increased. Renjun hadn't been able to get himself to eat much earlier, and now he was glad he didn't, because the pull reminded him of nausea.

"Those of you who return with an orb pass the test. Those who don't, fail. Starting in, how about, now."

"Found one," Donghyuck said less than a minute in, first as usual. The three of them dashed off like hounds on a scent. A couple of groups followed them, but they were fools if they thought they could beat Donghyuck and crew.

Jeno watched Renjun. "Anything?" Only the tapping of his foot belied his impatience.

Renjun felt miserable. This was on him, and he was letting them down. Again. He tried to seek something, but he felt nothing past the nauseating pull of the ones the professors were holding, and the churning of his blood, his flittering pulse, the shivering he couldn't seem to stop whether he was cold or not.

"Use your magic," Jeno said.

"Not here," Renjun said. "There's too many people around. Maybe if we go a little further up? I need to get away from those too." He pointed at the orbs in the professors' hands.

Jeno looked skeptically at the swirling orbs, but he nodded and the two of them started up the hill.

It was as if their movement released a torrent. Suddenly other students streamed out around them. Someone knocked against Renjun in the mad dash, and pushed him into Jeno. He clung onto Jeno half-dazed, feeling light-headed. When he got back to his senses, he sprang back, but the fast movement made him light-headed again.

They continued up the hill. Renjun let his blood run to feel for that pulling sensation. It was easy. The orbs were hard to miss when he used magic. They called magic so strongly, it left a sickening twist deep in the pit of his stomach.

"That way," he gasped, aiming for the closest one. He didn't know how far he could make it. The light-headedness hadn't gone away.

He shouldn't have said it out loud because a girl nearby heard him, and shouted to her partner, "He said it's that way. Wait, I think I can feel it too."

The two of them pulled past Renjun and Jeno. Jeno's lips set in a tight line, but he didn't say anything. The wind rushed past Renjun's ears, deafening. Or was that the sound of his own breathing, too loud and ragged to hear anything else?

"Another one, that way," he tried to say to Jeno, but the words wouldn't come up between his breaths.

He pushed more of his magic out, felt his arms grow slick and warm. Told himself he would make it work, at least this one time. Jeno's nostrils flared, his eyes riveting toward Renjun, but he followed as Renjun started to run faster, faster than maybe he'd ever run before. Trees hurtled past them, his vision blurred, and when it became clear again they were in another section of the forest. Still running, still headed in the right direction.

Closer now.

Within reach. The sickening call was heavy in the base of his stomach while the rest of his body was so, so light.

The next thing Renjun knew, he was on his hands and knees on the ground, his vision spinning. From the corner of his eye he saw a flicker of silver. "Jeno, there," he tried to say, but he wasn't sure he said it.

The world almost spun away from him, but he rolled onto his back, and pulled an arm over his eyes. He couldn't think. Closing his eyes settled him. When he opened his eyes again, Jeno, the idiot, was standing above him instead of going to get the orb. Stars winked in and out around him, and Renjun blinked until the night sky stilled in his vision.

Renjun shook his hand weakly in the orb's general direction. "It's right there," he said. "Go get it. We’ll pass."

"No," Jeno said. He crouched down by Renjun. It was hard for Renjun to see his expression, it kept blurring in and out of his view. "I can’t just leave you when you’re in this condition. Why do you keep hurting yourself?"

He reached out an arm, and on habit Renjun tried to bat it away. The attempt at movement brought a new wave of dizziness, so he gave up. Jeno twitched, but he didn’t withdraw his arm.

"We're partners," Jeno said. He sounded angry. He had a right to be angry, being partnered up with someone like Renjun. Renjun laughed weakly. "Don't laugh. That means that if you get hurt, it affects both of us."

"Inconvenient, huh?" Renjun mumbled.

"Yes," Jeno said. "So just let me help you. Why do you have so much pride?"

Renjun breathed in and out. Slowly, like he was unraveling, he said, "Maybe because that's all I have."

The words fractured into the space around him, clattering like stones. He breathed in and out.

“That’s not all you have,” Jeno said, his voice so quiet it might not have been more than a figment of Renjun’s imagination, a fragment of madness conjured from the haze in his mind. Renjun could feel Jeno’s eyes on him. He knew if he looked at Jeno now he’d be trapped, enthralled in those dark, long-lashed eyes, and hadn’t he told himself he wouldn’t let that happen?

Still, he looked. Jeno’s arm still hovered in the space between them.

Slowly, Renjun reached forward and let Jeno take his hand.

He didn’t protest this time when Jeno slid his other arm under his shoulder and lifted him up to a sitting position. He said nothing when Jeno began to undo the bindings around his arms, his fingers carefully unwinding the long swaths of cloth. He just breathed. Jeno stiffened at the sight of the blood, more of it than even Renjun had expected.

Renjun lifted one arm. Jeno bent his head down.

In the dark of the night, Renjun felt nothing but the warmth of Jeno's tongue running over his skin. In the dark of the night, he wanted nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit longer this week :D  
> hope it wasn't too much to get through
> 
> kicking myself because i have too many characters whose names start with j  
> and also whose brilliant idea was it to name one character jao and the other jae...@my past self why
> 
> also the comeback is A++ but waiting for more noren moments to sustain this beast...


	18. half a smile

That night changed something between them. Jeno wasn't sure what it was. He couldn’t say it was really anything tangible.

Renjun's wariness was still there, but when Jeno offered him a hand up, he didn't refuse it.

Each night at the end of the class, they would find a secluded spot in the forest, some place they could be alone. Jeno didn’t unwrap Renjun's bindings, not like that first night when he unraveled the layers of cloth that stood between them. Renjun always unwrapped them himself, and held out his arm, or sometimes both arms, while looking at the dirt.

Jeno would take his arms and lick the blood off them. He made it fast, and he pretended not to notice the shiver that ran through Renjun's skin when his lips met his arm, pretended the shiver didn't travel up from the place they touched and down his own skin.

"I don't know if we have to do this," Renjun had said the first night after that one night when things changed.

But Jeno had cut his eyes at him, daring him to argue, and something Renjun saw there had shut him up.

He turned aside each time while Jeno licked off the blood, but, as if he couldn’t help it, he watched Jeno from the corner of his eye.

Jeno thought that Jaemin was right—Renjun did taste good. Good enough that sometimes he wanted more than what he got, which he felt weird about because he wasn’t usually a fan of witch blood. He made it quick for both their sakes. It was weird enough as it was.

If Renjun noticed that Jeno’s tongue lingered a little longer than it had to sometimes, he said nothing about it. If Renjun's pulse sped up, if something beyond wariness crept into his expression, Jeno said nothing about it.

At the end, as his cuts closed up, Renjun would mutter, "Thanks", almost under his breath, and wrap up his arms with quick efficiency.

He wasn't lying when he said it though. He meant it.

* * *

They made a deal that night, beneath the cover of the trees.

"Let me help you. So we can both succeed," Jeno had said, because there wasn't a choice anymore. The lingering sensation of his mouth still fresh on Renjun's skin.

And Renjun had said, "Okay." He felt giddy and faint, and when he saw the cuts on his arm close up, he tried to swallow a bittersweet taste that spread across the back of his throat, almost choking off his voice.

He would accept this for his own good and Jeno's. He couldn't deny any longer that he wasn't going to make it through the class on his own, and if he tried he'd probably drag the both of them down.

He was too tired to be afraid that maybe Jeno would figure him out. He was tired of being afraid.

He tried not to feel like he was losing a part of himself.

It helped with he and Jeno returned down the hill with a silver orb, and he saw the shock on some of his classmates' faces.

* * *

Renjun sat across from Chenle while Chenle fidgeted. Renjun had asked to meet up with him early, and pulled him aside into one of the empty classrooms near mixed class.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Chenle asked, again. Renjun rolled his eyes.

"I wouldn't ask if I wasn't sure," Renjun said. "And don't you want to practice something we don't do in class?"

Chenle's eyes darted from side to side, and Renjun knew he had him.

"Okay, but we don't even know if you'll feel it," Chenle said.

"Can't know if we don't try."

"And you can't get mad at me after if you do something stupid."

"I'm not going to do something stupid unless you try to make me. You're not going to try to make me do something stupid, right?"

"That's the only reason I agreed to this," Chenle said, some of his hesitation fading as he grinned.

"That's a very Donghyuck thing to say," Renjun said. "Maybe he's rubbing off on you."

Chenle pretended to puke. "Please, if I was Donghyuck you'd already have regretted this."

Renjun sighed. Chenle wasn’t wrong, but… This was the risk of having friends who got amusement from your suffering.

"Okay, try me," Renjun said, and closed his eyes.

"Now? It's almost time for class," Chenle said, more loudly than he had to. Then again, being more loud than necessary was Chenle's default mode of operation.

Renjun opened one eye. "So just enough time."

"And you don't have to close your eyes," Chenle pointed out, which Renjun thought was unnecessary.

Renjun opened both eyes, and glared. "Okay, try me."

Chenle made a huffy kind of sound, like it was such a bother, mumbled something along the lines of, "Oh no, we really can't wait for later" ("Because there is no later, we just go home after class," Renjun snapped back), and began.

Chenle closed his eyes.

"You just said—"

"Shh, I'm concentrating," Chenle said.

Chenle's aura spread out around Renjun, not nearly as strong as Jao's or even Jeno's, despite his concentration and their proximity. A faint suggestion came to Renjun of getting onto his hands and feet, and doing five push-ups.

"Seriously?" Renjun asked.

"Don't distract me," Chenle said, though the suggestion changed to simply standing up and walking over to Chenle.

Chenle thrust more of his aura at Renjun, and though Renjun's heart rate went up and he needed to focus more on the thrum of his own magic, he realized it wasn't hard to resist the call. The call was gentle. A whisper, you can come, or you can not. Renjun hadn’t realized how familiar he’d become with Chenle’s aura, to the point where it enclosed him less like a trap and more like a well-worn blanket. He didn't know if Chenle was holding back, but he didn't ask if case Chenle wasn't.

Something like an itch formed in the back of his mind. The memory of a stronger call came to Renjun, a pull that demanded instead of asked, and of what he’d done back then.

Renjun pushed lightly.

Chenle's aura recoiled from him.

"Whoa, what are you doing?" Chenle had scooted back, and he rubbed his forearms, almost like he was trying to rub something off them.

"I just tried pushing back a little. I think with magic."

Chenle stared at him.

"Sorry, I should have said something," Renjun said.

"No, it's okay, but..." Chenle rubbed his forearms again. "I didn't know you could do that."

"I didn't really know either. I've only done it once before. By accident," Renjun said.

"It felt weird. Kind of like when another vampire's challenging you to a fight, which can be, um, invasive. It gets personal, if you get what I mean?"

Renjun did not get what he meant. "Sorry," he said again.

"It feels very personal when you do it," Chenle said.

"Oh,” Renjun said. "Uh, yeah, I won’t do that again. I’ve never tried it with anyone else, so I didn’t know it was like that.”

Chenle put his arms around his knees, seemed to think for a moment, and leveled his gaze at Renjun. "Then you can try it with me."

Renjun stared back at him.  
“You don’t have anyone else to try it with, right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

"I’m not uncomfortable,” Chenle said, though Renjun could tell he wasn’t sure. “I wasn't expecting it before. Let's try it again. Right now."

Renjun felt a lump rise in his throat. It threatened to bubble over into a stupid amount of happiness.

"You're the best," he said.

Chenle laughed, high and loud. "You know I'm going to hold that over Donghyuck forever."

"Someone needs to hold something over him."

Chenle closed his eyes, and his aura swept over Renjun again.

Renjun let it settle around him, trying to visualize how the pushing worked. He’d be more careful this time, and think about how much he could push back to get himself out of Chenle’s sway but not make it ‘personal’, or whatever Chenle had said.

Then a different aura swept over them both, a dark, sweet pressure that was painfully familiar, despite any attempt of Renjun’s to convince himself otherwise. It was familiar, and it was angry.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Chenle yelped. His aura withdrew completely, leaving only Jeno's in the room.

Jeno had pulled Chenle up from the ground. Renjun was on his feet and moving toward them before he could think twice, thinking of how easily Jeno had tossed him against a wall the first time they met, forgetting that Chenle was a vampire and could probably handle that much better. Seeing that Chenle’s eyes were wide. Renjun wrapped a hand around Jeno's arms and pulled, though it didn't do much.

"What are you doing?" he said to Jeno. "Let him go."

Jeno let go of Chenle then, but he didn't step back. Chenle staggered back like more than Jeno’s hand had been holding him in place.

"What are you doing?" Jeno asked. His question was directed at Renjun, but his eyes didn't leave Chenle.

"We were practicing what Jao does in class. The aural resistance stuff,” Renjun said.

"With him?" In a voice thick with scorn. Renjun saw Chenle's shoulders hunch up. Chenle took another step back from Jeno. "I don't see how that's very good practice—"

Renjun leaned in toward Jeno, blocking Chenle from his view. "Can we talk? Outside?"

Jeno's nostrils flared, but he said, "Fine."

They walked outside into the hallway.

* * *

Chenle put his head in his hands and massaged his temples. He told himself not to think about it too much, but like a curse, once he tried to stop he couldn't stop thinking about it. He'd always been bad at turning off his thoughts. The touch of Renjun's...magic...or whatever that had been cutting through his defenses like they were nothing, and then Jeno doing the same thing, all in the span of ten minutes. It was too much.

He was glad they'd left, because he didn't want them to see him like this. He just needed a minute. He'd collect his thoughts, fold them up nicely, and shove them into that box in the back of his mind for everything he didn't want to examine too closely.

A familiar tug came on the link in his mind.

Not now.

Jisung had the worst timing. He couldn't delay, because that would be more suspicious. He gathered himself as best he could, and let Jisung in, hoping that he wouldn't look too closely.

_What's wrong?_ It didn't work. Jisung was observant, after all.

_Nothing._

_Who?_

Chenle willed himself not to think, but the images played through his mind against his will. Renjun, and Jeno, and the push pull of their auras, of Renjun's... Jisung didn't miss the images, and Chenle felt a cold anger rise through Jisung. He wished it didn't because he'd hope that anger was for him and not at him, that something of their long past friendship still remained.

_Why would you do that with him?_

The disapproval was clear. Some disappointment too, and concern that he was doing something stupid. That was why there was no point in hoping.

_It's just an exercise, for mixed class._

Jisung seemed unsatisfied, but he was forced to accept the answer. He couldn't refute anything Chenle said about mixed class since he wasn’t in it, but Chenle knew he'd probably ask Jeno and Jaemin about it later.

_Anyway, what do you want, Jisung?_

It was easier to tamp down his emotions when they talked business. When Jisung told him do this, do that, and he complied with the subservience his parents had always encouraged him to have.

There was surprise now, which surprised Chenle.

_I don’t want anything._

_You never don’t want anything._

_I just felt that something was wrong._

So now Chenle didn't have privacy either. It'd been his mistake to forget that.

A hesitation, a vague sense of unease. _You never tell me when anything's wrong anymore,_ Jisung said.

So he had noticed now, many many years too late. But all Chenle said was, _Nothing's wrong._

* * *

As soon as Jeno and Renjun were far enough away that Renjun didn't think Chenle could hear them, he turned on Jeno. "What's your deal?"

"He was getting his aura all over you, and you're okay with that?" Jeno asked.

"Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?" Renjun didn't get what this was about.

Jeno stared at him incredulously. "You see what Jao does in class and you can feel auras, so you should know better than that. I thought you of all people would know not to let a vampire use his aura on you whenever he wants."

"I asked him to, Jeno."

"What?" And instead of asking why like Renjun expected, Jeno asked, "Why him?"

"Uh, clearly because he’s my friend, Jeno. I trust him."

"I don't like it," Jeno said.

Renjun felt a flare of anger. "You don't have to like it. I didn’t ask your opinion."

The pressure around him seemed to grow heavier, though Jeno's expression didn't change. Renjun gritted his teeth and forced down the other words about to come out of his mouth. The fact that he didn't blurt it all out was some sign of personal growth. He could congratulate himself on that later. "I promise it won't affect you, or our grades, or any of that, if that's what you're worried about."

"What do you even need to practice for?" Jeno asked.

Renjun stared at him. Was it just him, or was Jeno's lower lip starting to jut out? It had to be just him. "Isn't that obvious? Like you said, I can feel auras, so I'm—I’m weaker to them." Great, he stuttered. He didn't know why he was admitting this to Jeno of all people, but he hoped it would get Jeno off his back. And out of this strange mood he seemed to be in. "I need practice more than anyone else."

"Chenle isn't even good with his aura."

Anger flared up in Renjun’s chest again, just when he’d about tamped it down. "You don't get to say that about him."

"I do. I know exactly how good he is. He's not."

"And I'm not good with magic. So I guess it's perfect. It's not like I have anyone else to practice with."

Jeno checked the hall around them, as if making sure no one was there. "You could practice with me," he said.

Renjun blinked. "Are you...offering?"

Jeno looked pained.

"Why?" Renjun asked.

"Because I feel sorry for you," Jeno said. Of course.

Renjun didn't know why he had expected a different answer. Something bubbled beneath the surface. As coolly as he could, he said, "I appreciate that, but you don't have to. Chenle and I have got it figured out."

He started to leave, but Jeno put a hand on his shoulder. "Renjun, wait."

Renjun turned back around slowly. He knew if he stayed he'd say something he would regret sooner or later.

"I'm not trying to brag, but I'm good with my aura," Jeno said. "I think it'd really help if you're trying to practice resistance." He paused. His confidence made Renjun want to kick him in the shin. How would it be to be like that, so self-assured, so certain of his place on the top? Jeno would never understand what it was like not to have that conviction in himself. "It could be good for our partnership too. Help us work together better, or something."

Renjun hesitated then. That he could understand, and maybe Jeno was right. He owed it to Jeno to try to improve their partnership, to attempt to be less of a dead weight.

"Fine. We can try sometime. I'm still going to practice with Chenle though," Renjun said.

"Why? You don't need him if you practice with me," Jeno said. "Hey. Renjun?"

Renjun ignored him and headed back to the classroom where Chenle waited so they could go to mixed class together. Jeno trailed behind him, hands shoved in his pockets.

* * *

Renjun and Chenle walked into the class talking about how one of the first years had mooned his professor. All in all, Renjun's spirits were higher than they'd been in weeks. His mind felt clear, and though he still felt a lingering shakiness in his limbs, the tremors had stopped. He could see himself getting the hang of pushing off auras, or at least deflecting them enough that they wouldn't entrap him the way they did before. It was a heady thought.

Jeno acted like he wasn't listening to Renjun and Chenle's conversation, but he mumbled something under his breath that might have been, "Gossips." Renjun didn't think that was fair. He wasn't that much of a gossip, but his two closest friends were Donghyuck and Chenle. That meant he literally had no choice.

"Don't act like you aren't interested," Renjun said, a natural response that came out without thought. He’d spent too much time with Donghyuck. Before he could be shocked that he'd said that to Jeno, and before he could register that Jeno was shocked he'd said it, he saw Donghyuck sitting in his usual seat waiting for them.

His good mood drained away.

Donghyuck watched them with his arms crossed, his face impassive. Renjun saw his eyes flit to Renjun's arms then up to his face. Renjun swallowed.

He sat down beside Donghyuck and touched his arm. "Let's talk? After class."

Donghyuck didn't uncross his arms. "So you want to talk now, huh?"

"I know I've been...out of it."

"That's saying something."

Renjun winced. He tried to keep his own voice down, but Donghyuck didn't bother. Renjun could feel the others trying to listen in and pretending they weren't.

"I know that I've brushed off a lot of what you've been trying to tell me," he said. He didn't want to say more, not with everyone around, but he knew Donghyuck deserved more than that. He lowered his voice. "I know I haven't been the best friend, or roommate lately."

He'd missed his turn to take out the trash at least once. He'd missed a couple times they planned to hang out, even if it was just a movie night in the living room. He suspected he'd missed a lot more, but it was hard to pin down the details.

He thought he'd seen Donghyuck and Chenle talking to each other once in the living room without trying to tear each other's throats out, and he knew it had to be bad if they'd resorted to tolerating each other. He'd had the vague thought of joining them, but when his body touched his bed he hadn't gotten back up.

There had probably been more nights that passed like that than he knew.

He knew he hadn't been there for Donghyuck, and that he hadn't let Donghyuck be there for him. Something inside him was afraid. He already relied on Donghyuck so much that he should have been used to it. Instead he felt a sick churning inside his gut, almost dread, that he was getting closer to a day when, without realizing it, he wouldn’t be standing on his own two feet. A day when he would need someone else to get by. Sometimes he wondered where he'd be without Donghyuck, or Chenle, or Mark, or even Jaemin and Jeno now, and he didn't like where his thoughts led. They tumbled away, spiraling, into an empty corridor that always led to the same destination.

Donghyuck huffed. "You haven't," he said, but he uncrossed his arms. "After class then."

* * *

After they separated from the others, Renjun and Donghyuck walked quietly up the sidewalk to their apartment. Renjun wasn't sure how to start the conversation, though he knew he had to.

"Do you have something to say to me?" he asked. Not the most diplomatic starter. He wasn’t great at coming up with the right thing to say.

Donghyuck stopped, and Renjun stopped next to him. The streetlight illuminated Donghyuck's face. "Are you ready to listen?"

"I'll try to be."

Renjun waited for Donghyuck to lay into him, but instead of speaking, Donghyuck looked him over. "You're looking better."

"I...made a deal. With Jeno." Renjun pulled his sleeve up. The binding was a stiff yellow white in the light, aside from some patches of brown orange. He unwound it, and let Donghyuck see his arm. Small pale lines marred otherwise smooth skin, scars from before the deal. He ran his finger over a patch of skin, unlined aside from the palest sliver of pink, itself already fading. "This is from today," he said.

"He drinks your blood," Donghyuck said.

"He...cleans up what's already there," Renjun said. Donghyuck took Renjun’s arm and held it up. He ran a thumb from Renjun's wrist down to his elbow, and Renjun was sure that even in the light of the streetlamp he didn't miss a single line. Renjun felt like he'd been stripped of his clothes, and panic crested over him for a moment. There was too much he didn’t want to be seen, and it was ugly, would be uglier if reflected in someone else’s eyes. Except this was Donghyuck, and Renjun shouldn’t feel that way about Donghyuck, didn’t want to feel that way about Donghyuck. Renjun held his arm in place. "It helps," Renjun said.

"Aren't you afraid he'll figure you out?"

Every time. "He hasn't yet."

"Does it help with the blood loss?"

"A little." There was something about vampire saliva that stimulated blood production—that was how they could feed on the same human day after day if they wanted to. But it didn't work as well on witches, and it worked better with a bite.

"I'm getting better though," Renjun said. "I haven't needed to use as much blood for the same spells as I used to."

"That's good. That's good, but do you need to use blood at all?"

The darkest line was near Renjun's elbow. That one probably wouldn't fade nicely over time like the others would. Donghyuck looked at it at the same time Renjun did.

"I think I do," Renjun said. Donghyuck let go of his arm, and Renjun pulled the sleeve of his sweatshirt back over it. He tried not to rush it, because if he did he might give off the impression that it was a big deal, and it wasn’t. Donghyuck didn’t look convinced.

“How do you know that?” Donghyuck said, a harsh edge to his voice. Renjun probably deserved that.

"Have you ever thought using your magic felt wrong?"

Donghyuck shook his head.

"It's always felt wrong to me," Renjun said. "I kind of didn't think I was supposed to be doing magic. That it was all a fluke that I was even here."

"Renjun, you shouldn't put yourself down like that—”

"You know it's true. You helped me cheat my way through class, and I still got the worst grades." Renjun was the one who sounded harsh now. With an undertone of panic, the need to rush the words out before he gave up on them. "It felt wrong until this. I can't explain it, but this feels right. It feels like it's the way it's supposed to be."

Donghyuck watched him. Renjun thought he seemed a little sad.

"I didn't only say to stop because you're hurting yourself. Blood magic is forbidden. You could get locked up if anyone found out."

"Blood magic?"

"Magic using blood, though I've never heard of using your own. It's usually whackos who cut up squirrels and birds these days."

Renjun thought of a bird slashed across the breast, life leaking into dry earth. Something inside him pulsed. "I'd never do that. I don't even think it would work," he said. He didn't want to find out otherwise.

"I know." Renjun could tell Donghyuck was holding something back, but Donghyuck didn't say it. He looked toward the streetlight instead. "It's getting late."

They started walking toward their apartment.

"I won't stop you from using your magic that way if you have to, but if it gets to the point of the last couple weeks, I'm going to force you to stop even if I have to tie you to your bed and beat your ass. The chores aren't going to do themselves, you know."

Renjun winced. "I'm sorry about the garbage, and being flaky, and the other stuff."

"As much as I like to hear a pretty apology, how sorry are you?"

"I'll do the dishes for the rest of the week."

"Two weeks."

Renjun sighed. "Fine."

* * *

Renjun headed out from Human Studies 3. After 2 years of the subject, he still clung to the idea that the tortures of boredom and insult were worth the lack of effort. The professor seemed determined to prove him wrong. The textbook was twice as thick as previous years, and they had a series of outside readings that would take at least 24 hours if he actually read them. At least some of them were by human authors so he could sparknotes that shit.

He started down the stairs, lamenting his poor life choices, when he felt something solid touch the upper middle of his back between his shoulder blades. It pushed.

Renjun tilted forward, the bottom of the stairs swinging into view. His life flashed before his eyes, and he thought about throwing out a foot to catch himself, but wait, a foot would trip him down further, or he’d twist his ankle, or—

He was falling and there was no more time to think. He reached out a hand wildly to grab something, anything.

His fingers grasped onto cool smoothness, and he gripped at it like a lifeline. It jarred his arm. He hissed, but he held on. His view twisted, and he banged his forehead against the side of the wall, but it stopped his fall. It was more awkward than painful. He stayed there for a second, forehead pressed against the wall, his heart pounding. He realized his fingers had caught onto the wooden guardrail of the stairs. By the time he straightened up and turned around to look up at the top of the stairs, no one was there.

Someone below him on the stairs glanced up at the noise and saw him. "You ok?" she called.

"Yeah, just tripped. Haha," he said. His voice came out shaky despite the attempt at a laugh.

* * *

The slow dream. The forest passed fast and in silence this time. Renjun saw a stag in the distance, but it didn't approach.

He reached the edge of the lake, and looked down.

Orange-yellow cat's eyes.

"Hello," his reflection said. "It's nice to see you here again."

On instinct or compulsion, his fingers drew down to the water and the fingers of his reflection reached up. Their fingers met at the surface.

Instead of the coldness of water, he felt the faint warmth of skin, the faintest touch of fingertips against his. Ripples spread across the water from where each fingertip met, intersecting with each other in ever growing circles, but they didn't shift the image Renjun saw in the water. They passed through his reflection, moving only the surface of the water.

"Who are you?" he whispered.

There was a sensation of falling, of his gut being wrenched down to his feet, though his feet didn't move from their place on the shore. For a moment he thought he'd been swallowed up by water, that he was the reflection looking up from beneath a surface of liquid glass rather than the other way around.

"You're not asking the right questions," his reflection said.

And then he was awake.

* * *

When Renjun was alone, he sometimes felt the skin prickle on the back of his neck. He couldn’t tell where the feeling came from, but he didn’t like it.

He started calling Donghyuck or Chenle or sometimes YangYang for lunch when he'd usually grab a quick bite alone. He sometimes hung around Jaemin and Jeno before mixed class if he couldn’t find his other friends, when before he'd avoid breathing the same air as them because they were, one, vampires, and, two, attracted way too much attention. He trailed Mark to his job at the Human Studies library, and even bothered Ten at the med ward.

"You do know I'm busy, right?" Ten would say.

Renjun would say, “How can you be too busy for your favorite fourth year?”

“You are not my favorite fourth year. Don’t get cocky,” Ten would say, but he wouldn’t kick Renjun out.

It wasn’t until Renjun came late to mixed class once and Jeno said, "We didn't see you earlier”, as if he’d expected Renjun to be there, that he realized he’d kind of been avoiding being alone.

He couldn’t believe he’d been acting like he was scared of…what exactly? A feeling of unease? It sounded dumb even in his head.

* * *

The five of them sat in a circle at the top of the hill. They all sat on the ground, aside from Jaemin who lay across the rock with his head propped on one arm, looking for all the world like he was chilling on a couch instead of a stone.

Renjun wrapped Chenle's jacket around himself. Chenle had graciously given it up earlier, since for him it was a fashion statement rather than protection against the weather. Unexpectedly, it was also good weather protection. It was thick and warm, and feather soft against his skin.

A wind ran through the night, rustling the leaves of the trees. It brought a chill despite the jacket, but Renjun didn’t mind. It distracted him from the ghost of heat on his arms, over now already healed cuts. It reminded him that he didn't feel feverish and shaky either. He hadn't for almost a week.

"So when are you going to talk to Doyoung?" Donghyuck asked.

"I have been talking to Doyoung," Jeno said.

"Okay, so what's the clue?"

"The clue?"

"Uh, yeah, like the clue that made him and Jaehyun run off into the woods."

"I haven't asked about that."

Donghyuck squinted at him. "What? So you're saying you've been talking with Doyoung all this time, and you've got nothing? What have you been talking about?"

Jeno squirmed a little at the question, which was kind of funny. Renjun hadn't thought that Donghyuck could ruffle even Jeno's feathers. Then again, it was Donghyuck.

"Just school, and how he's doing."

"How is he doing?" Jaemin asked.

"He's a lot better, for sure. Almost full recovery. Aside from Jaehyun, I mean..."

"Ugh, useless," Donghyuck said. "I knew I shouldn't have relied on you for information."

"Hey," Jeno said defensively. "You never said I had to ask him about it."

"It was heavily implied when we talked before. I didn't think I had to spell it out for you."

"That conversation was forever ago. How am I supposed to know you wanted me to ask about it now?"

"Yeah," Chenle said. "Not everyone speaks Donghyuck."

Donghyuck shook his head in consternation. "Jeno, Chenle, everyone who matters speaks Donghyuck. Honestly, you should just let me talk to him."

Jeno didn't bother to hide his annoyance, though Renjun knew he could have. If Jeno had known better, he would have known letting Donghyuck see that he'd gotten under your skin was the precise way to encourage him to keep going. To be honest, Jeno got along better with Donghyuck than Renjun expected. Maybe it was that they were both top of class, and after their fights in the classroom they had some kind of weird rapport that came from mano e mano combat. Renjun didn't really get it.

"You are not making a good case for me to let you talk to him," Jeno said.

Renjun leaned against the rock. The plush warmness of Chenle's jacket made him sleepy. He wouldn't sleep, not when they were talking about something important, but he was tired. Using magic was draining for any witch, and today had used more than most.

Professor Kim had them try to create barriers around small glass globules today, and barrier magic was some of the worst. It required constant concentration, and had to be refortified on one side even as the other was created. More than one witch swore out loud in front of Professor Kim, and got put in detention.

He felt attention on him, a flicker of mild concern, and he knew it was Jeno watching him, probing lightly with his aura. Jeno sure cared a lot about doing well in class. For the sake of his grades, he’d taken it upon himself to make sure Renjun maintained some level of physical well-being. Renjun felt a little sorry for him, thought at least he was getting blood out of it? And Renjun tried not to think about what that meant, that he was getting used to letting a vampire have some of his blood.

Renjun sat up again, and rearranged his face into a placid smile he hoped was both reassuring and awake enough. He tried to get his head back into the conversation.

"It's not like Doyoung's going to tell me anything. He probably wouldn't if it's dangerous," Jeno said.

"That would only mean you're not persuasive enough. Which, considering it's you, understandable," Donghyuck said.

"I can be persuasive," Jeno protested.

Renjun tried to stifle a yawn. He'd seen this play out before. Jeno had walked into the trap and he didn't even know it.

"Then prove it," Donghyuck said, and smiled because he’d won.

* * *

The default jingle of Renjun's cell phone came on. It took him a long time to recognize the sound, because no one called him these days. His first suspicion was that it was a prank call, probably courtesy of Donghyuck. Donghyuck had done it once before during their second year, and he didn’t let Renjun forget it.

("How could you believe that? Ghosts don't exist," Donghyuck had crowed.

"How do you know that? Vampires, witches, and demons exist, why can’t ghosts?"

"Just admit I totally got you this time."

Renjun hadn’t. He had used the last of his dignity to refuse to admit anything, but Donghyuck had got him. He had got him good.)

This time he'd give Donghyuck a piece of his mind.

With deliberate slowness he reached into his pocket. He'd make Donghyuck wait until the last ring, or maybe let it go straight to voicemail. See how he liked that.

Eventually Renjun decided to pull his phone out of his pocket. He almost dropped it when he saw the caller id.

There, on the blue phone screen, it read, "Mom".

He swiped the call button to accept. His finger might have been shaking. His mother never called him while he was at the academy.

"Hi mom," he said, injecting his voice with cheer.

"Hi Renjun." Her voice on the phone came over saccharine sweet, nothing at all like what he was used to.

"What are you calling for?" Tried to match the sweetness. He hoped nothing was wrong.

"I just wanted to check in on you, since it's fourth year and you have to be around vampires all the time. It worried me."

Renjun tried not to cling onto each word, but his mind worked double-time, injecting each word with meaning before he could stop himself. She was worried about him. She wanted him to know she was worried about him. Did it mean all was forgiven? Could it, might it, mean she'd call again?

"You were worried?"

"Of course I was worried. Is it tough for you right now? It must be."

"It is tough," he said. It's a relief to admit it. It was hard not to hope that she'd care, if anyone would.

"Are you still in that advanced magic class?" Her voice swung even further away from genuine. "Which one was it again?"

"It's creation magic," he said. "And...yes, I am."

The line went quiet for a while. He almost thought she hung up, but it didn't fall into the beeping sound that came when one side cut off.

"The professor's nice."

Silence for another duration of time.

"I'm sure he is."

"She," Renjun corrected.

"How is mixed class?"

He knew he couldn't say everything that had happened, that he was barely keeping up and that he probably wouldn't keep up soon, that he'd messed up and become acquainted with multiple vampires in ways she'd yell at him for. "It's hard," he said finally.

The quiet on the line unsettled him. It wasn't like his mother to call if she had nothing to say. He tried for reassurance, and to fill up the spaces with his words so they wouldn't feel so empty. "It's not so bad. My vampire partner for the next couple months, he's...nice. He's been looking out for me. Donghyuck too."

His mother's voice spoke again, and this time it was finally real, a shade he knew and understood. "Good. Stick with Donghyuck. Don't trust the vampires, Renjun, even if they're nice."

"I know, mom."

"Remember what you are."

She hung up.

* * *

"So, uh, what did you find that made you go into the forest after the missing pairs?" Jeno asked Doyoung, trying to convince himself that Donghyuck hadn't baited him into this. "If you remember. If you want to tell me."

He half-expected Doyoung to shake his head, and say it was training squadron business. That's what Doyoung usually did for anything remotely close to his missions.

"Jaehyun found it, not me." The name came to Doyoung more easily now. "Kun, he was a witch from one of the pairs that disappeared." Jeno already knew who Kun was, like most who followed the training squadrons. He was a solid all-rounder who did best in team situations when he was at the head of several pairs working together. "He left a journal behind, stuffed in the middle of another book in the restricted section of the library. I told the professors about the journal, I think they've recovered it now."

"Do you remember what was in the journal?"

Doyoung's eyes took on a reflective cast, and Jeno remembered that no matter how well Doyoung was recovering, he was here and Jaehyun was not. "No, I don't," Doyoung said. Unspoken was _No, I don't want to._

Doyoung tried to smile at Jeno. "I'm sure the professors will get to the bottom of this eventually. No one else needs to get involved."

* * *

Renjun had cut his cheek by accident. He felt stupid about it because it hadn't been from falling, or using magic, or trying to do anything vaguely cool. A branch had snagged on his sweater, and he'd panicked, because this was his nice sweater and why the hell had he decided to wear it this morning. Which then led to him not looking at where he was going, and running into a bush. He'd stumbled out of the bush spitting twigs from his mouth, with his sweater pretty much ruined and a cut across his left cheek, just under his cheekbone.

So now Jeno was leaning in far too close. His hand was around Renjun's waist for a better hold, and Renjun tried really hard not to think about Jeno's hip pressed against his. Or any of the rest of his body. Jeno was wearing a sleeveless shirt, which was stupid considering the weather. Less stupid because he was a vampire and didn't feel the cold, but still stupid because if any human saw him they'd know right away he was either inhuman or insane—no one wore that kind of getup in near freezing temperatures.

Jeno's other hand curved under Renjun's chin and lifted his face up. It made it easier to avoid looking down Jeno's shirt—not that he had tried to at all, but the shirt hung low, and if he saw a flash of skin, the glimpse of a bare chest, it was because he'd had no where else to look.

Now he could look at Jeno's face instead. Should be easy since he saw that often enough.

But when he looked up he realized how close Jeno's face was. He knew Jeno's face, but not so well that he could trace the lashes of each eye, or follow the profile of his nose down to his lips. Lips not even chapped from the cold. Lips Renjun suddenly realized were much, much too close to his own. He couldn't breathe because he was afraid Jeno would feel his breath.

The lips moved up, away, as Jeno positioned his head to the side, but Renjun didn't have time to feel relieved. Jeno leaned in, and his mouth brushed against Renjun's face just over the cut. His lips felt soft. Not chapped for sure.

Renjun should have been used to this, but his face didn't feel the same as his arms. He didn't know if it was the closeness, or the shock of warmth on his cold skin, but his face felt hypersensitive. The heat of Jeno's mouth seemed to burn. His pulse started to rise, even though Jeno wasn't using his aura, and he knew it was only a matter of time before Jeno noticed.

Jeno's tongue darted out against his cheek. Renjun knew the second before it happened that his heartbeat would shoot up like crazy.

Renjun put a hand against Jeno's face and pushed him off.

"Wuh?" Jeno said, lifting his head. His hand still pressed against Renjun's waist, a pressure Renjun couldn't ignore now that he knew it was there, holding him tighter than before. "I wasn't done?" Jeno said, perplexed more than anything. Still too close for comfort.

Renjun willed his pulse to slow, tried to distract Jeno from it by talking, as he extricated himself from Jeno's grasp. The vampire let him go slowly, still confused, his pupils still dilated. "I think a cut on my cheek would look cool. Make me look more badass. So, uh, we can leave this one."

As he spoke and Jeno focused on what he was saying, some of the hunger faded. Jeno’s pupils shrank back to a normal size. Renjun let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

"You're weird," Jeno said. "But okay."

"Whatever. Weird is better than boring," Renjun said.

"I'm not boring," Jeno said.

"I wasn’t talking about you," Renjun said. Jeno’s face froze with his mouth open a little too wide. He snapped it shut, but not before he caught Renjun’s incredulous stare. Renjun must have stepped into some alternate dimension because he couldn't have just flustered Jeno Lee.

"Let's just go," Jeno grumbled.

Renjun had to turn away. To save Jeno the embarrassment, obviously. Not to hide half a smile that did not exist and was not currently making its way up his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one felt like more of a transitional chapter
> 
> sorry if it's a little light on the action, it came out this way and i just go with the flow, so...


	19. when the clock strikes 3

Jeno tapped the blank page of the journal in front of him with the top of his pen. Four minutes in, and he still had nothing. Spending more time with Renjun didn't make the biweekly reflections on their partnership any easier. What was he going to say? That Renjun's magic still felt weird to him, even if Renjun felt less weird? Which from what Jao said he should have acclimated to already. When he asked Jaemin about Donghyuck’s magic, Jaemin said, "Kind of shocks you at first, but you get used to it." Nothing about feeling exposed. Nothing about feeling like he was about to be dragged under water.

Or he could say he was sneaking in a taste of Renjun's blood at the end of every class. That would definitely fly with the professors.

"You don't have to take this so seriously," Renjun said. Renjun sat in the chair beside him, eyeing the clock on the wall that had passed a quarter of an hour. When they turned in their reflections, they could leave class early.

"What are you in a rush for?" Jeno asked.

Renjun's eyes cut from the clock to Jeno. "My time is valuable. I don't have to be in a rush."

Jeno looked over at Renjun's journal. The handwriting was close to illegible, and he'd written about half a paragraph.

_Reflections on working together: I'm getting used to it. Can't say our teamwork is the best, but it's okay. I think the daily exercises are helping. Not sure if I can feel my partner's aura, but sometimes there's a weird itchy sensation? Maybe I just need to scratch my nose though._

"That is bullshit," Jeno said. Renjun didn't even flinch. Jeno kind of missed the days when Renjun wouldn't look him in the eye. It wasn't like those days were far behind them. There was still a hesitation there, invisible distance neither of them were eager to bridge. But something about being forced to spend hours together and their little I-won't-tell-you-won't-tell blood pact made it hard to keep that up.

Except he was pretty sure Renjun had told Donghyuck. That guy kept looking at him.

"Just telling them what they want to hear," Renjun said.

"You're literally lying. Also this is five sentences long. Can you at least try to half-ass it?"

"I'm not lying. Sometimes my nose does get itchy."

Jeno chose to ignore that. "They said half a page."

Renjun played with his pen. "This doesn't even affect your grade. It's individual, didn't you hear?" He sighed when Jeno didn't let it go. "You're such a stickler for the rules."

Renjun scrawled another half paragraph, writing larger so that it'd take up more space. Jeno was pretty sure the last few lines read, _Partner can be pushy. He should do some reflection on taking my opinions into account. Not that I'd want to ask for too much._ But the handwriting was so messy Jeno couldn't tell for sure.

"Happy now?"

"I'm not pushy—"

Renjun crossed out the lines he'd just written, and wrote instead, _Partner is 100% perfect, totally helpful, and not at all a nuisance about schoolwork. Can do no wrong._

Renjun closed the journal, and pushed it away from him. "Can't believe people think you're some modern age bad boy vampire. That's the real bullshit here," he muttered under his breath.

"You thought I was a..." Jeno couldn't bring himself to say it. He didn't think he was uncool, and he knew he was popular, but he wasn’t about to let that come out of his own mouth.

Renjun almost dropped his pen. He looked scandalized. "I did not. I said that's what _other_ people think."

"What do you think?"

“It doesn’t matter what I think.”

“Yeah, but I’m curious.”

Jeno thought Renjun would give some offhand response, but something in his expression shifted, going pensive. Renjun tapped the pen against the desk. “You’re different than I thought you’d be,” he said.

“Different how?” Jeno asked, struck by a sudden need to know, an urge past curiosity.

"When you're not throwing people into walls—"

"Do you have to keep bringing that up? I said I was sorry about that—" 

" _When_ you're not throwing people into walls, you're okay. For a vampire.” He didn’t have to add that last part, but okay. “I thought you’d be like, like what people say. I thought you’d do whatever you wanted without caring about other people or the rules, but you don’t, not always. And you’re a try hard."

Jeno frowned. “So you think I’m a loser.”

Renjun cracked half a smile, though he didn’t quite look Jeno in the eye. "Maybe, but I like you better that way."

* * *

_Humans descended into an age of darkness after the fall of the Roman Empire. While popular belief asserts that humans would have reached this state by themselves, which I do not refute given their tendency toward illogical and chaotic behaviors, I will present an alternative theory. It is suggested that there may have been vampiric involvement in the downfall of Rome, though it is impossible to confirm such an idea. We may only enumerate the facts. The Romans knew of vampires to a degree, though perhaps they did not describe them as such. Several witches held positions of social or political influence during the reign of Rome, and they prescribed rules that made it exceedingly difficult for vampires to prey upon humans. This, along with the rise of hunter societies among the humans, turned vampires from hunters to hunted in some parts of the world. It is also of note that the last of human hunter societies vanished during the age of darkness, and that it was a time of benefit for the most violent of supernaturals, witch and vampire alike._

Renjun flipped to the back cover of the book. The author's portrait stared back. R.D. Kim, Historian and Witch. Renjun could have guessed the author was a witch.

"Want to come to the party at Asomateus on Friday?" Jaemin asked.

Renjun didn't even look up from his book. "No," he said.

To his disappointment, his voice was overridden by Donghyuck, who almost fell out of his seat. "Hell yeah I do," Donghyuck said.

"Cool, I have some invites to hand out," Jaemin said, taking out a couple black envelopes from his bag.

Donghyuck snatched his out of Jaemin's hand, staring at it with an emotion akin to awe. Like he wasn't the one who’d made fun of the use of letters last time. The hypocrisy of it.

Jaemin held out an envelope to Renjun, who waved his hand. "Not interested."

"You are not allowed to not be interested," Donghyuck said.

"I don’t think I was asking for permission."

"In the name of best friendship, you can't not go with me to this. I've never been to Asomateus, and you want me to miss out?"

"You've never been?" Jaemin asked. "I'll invite you over next time."

Donghyuck pumped his fist. "Score."

"Look, you can hang with Jaemin. You don't need me to go."

"No can do, Renjun Huang. You owe me, and if I want to see you suffer by going to this party then that's what's going to happen."

Renjun scowled, wondering if it was possible to revoke best friendship.

"Seriously, other people would kill for an invite. You're lucky you have me around to drag your ass out. Otherwise you'd really have no life."

"My life would be just fine," Renjun said.

"Right, I bet reading—" Donghyuck glanced over, and made a face of disgust. "—Histories of Humanity: Europe Before the 1500s is so much fun."

"Please don't remind me of this torture," Renjun said. "You do not understand my suffering."

Donghyuck shrugged. "Anyway, you're going."

Jaemin slung an arm around Renjun's shoulders. "You have to come. It'll be so much fun," he said. Renjun didn't find that reassuring at all.

* * *

"Stop running out of my barrier," Renjun said. Renjun was exhausted, they were about halfway up the hill, and if Jeno ran through the edge of his barrier one more time he was going to stab someone. Probably Jeno.

"Make the barrier bigger then," Jeno said.

"It's not that easy."

"Donghyuck made it look easy." Renjun resisted the urge to throw something at Jeno, mainly because he didn’t have anything to throw. (And because he had the patience of a saint, but that was a given). Jeno didn't have to try to surround them both with a barrier on their way up the hill, in this new form of torture the professors had decided to throw at him. Jeno got the easy part, the running up the hill like they did every day part.

"Donghyuck makes everything look easy. Damn him and you both. Why don't you go join them then?" Renjun snapped. That would make everything easier. He could lie down on the ground and pretend he was part of the grass.

“Okay.” Jeno lifted his leg, pretending like he was about to run off, and the edge of his foot grazed the surface of Renjun's barrier. Which admittedly was more like a child’s school project held together by tacky glue and duct tape than a barrier. It splintered at his touch, and Renjun groaned. The barrier fell to pieces.

"Sorry?" Jeno said.

"You will be," Renjun said. He raised a hand. Several rocks levitated up from the ground. Renjun was satisfied when Jeno shifted back in surprise. He was less satisfied when he let the rocks fly, and Jeno dodged each one without blinking an eye.

"Nice try?" Jeno said.

Renjun spread his fingers and more rocks started to rise shakily from the ground. Which was really more effort than he should be putting into this and would probably make the rest of the evening a pain, but revenge came before school.

"Whoa, you do know we still have halfway to go right?"

Renjun groaned. He did know, but Jeno pointing it out made even the idea of getting a good hit feel pointless. "Why don't we just go up the normal way and pretend I made a barrier?"

"I'm not going to cheat," Jeno said.

"Seems like that's up to me," Renjun said. “I’m the one who has to make the barrier.”

"You wouldn't," Jeno said. Renjun almost laughed. Jeno sounded so appalled.

"You have no idea what I would and wouldn't do."

"I can't believe we're stuck together until the end of the month," Jeno muttered, but he slowed down for the rest of the way. When Renjun got too tired to both keep up a barrier and keep up the pace, Jeno took him by the wrist and guided him the rest of the way.

"You're not as bad as I thought," Renjun said, lying on the ground afterward. He held up a hand over his face, blocking out the moon.

"You're worse than I thought," Jeno said. "You're petty. And you suck at school."

"Thanks."

"It wasn't a compliment."

But Jeno's touch was gentle when he put a hand on Renjun's arm. Renjun watched the moon overhead as Jeno drew his arm to his mouth.

* * *

YangYang clicked together several more pieces of metal. The automatons he created became smaller and smaller with each new rendition. It disturbed Renjun that their movements had become more realistic along with it, less of that mechanical shifting, less of that slight distortion to remind him they were metal and glass. He'd be fooled into thinking they were real bugs if it weren't for their metal exterior.

He told YangYang as much.

"Wait until I paint them," YangYang said.

Renjun tried to ignore the miniature bug army forming beside him, and put his pencil to the paper beneath his hands.

"What happened to painting?" YangYang asked.

"It's not like I only paint," Renjun said. "And this is less..." Less what? Less heavyweight? Less like he would draw out a fear he couldn't understand? "Less difficult."

He didn't say that he'd been having dreams of boys running through dark forests again. And that though neither of the boys ever turned around again, his eyes followed the brown haired one. He always woke sweating.

Renjun called up his magic and started to draw. He drew lines across paper, half in a trance. Didn't realize until the end that he still felt fear, and that the fear wasn't a remnant of the nights before.

When he looked down, he saw he’d drawn someone lying at the bottom of a ravine. It was hard to make out the details. Grey was scratched across the surface, the shading dark and chaotic, none of the lines exactly precise. But the picture somehow was clear.

Jeno, lying twisted on his side.

A gash across his chest. Renjun didn't think he was moving, but of course he wasn't. It was a drawing.

* * *

Jeno held out a bag of pills. Small white circles each no more than a centimeter across. Renjun guessed there were over a hundred of them in the plastic bag hanging from Jeno's hand.

Renjun was going to have to revise the straight-edge idea of Jeno that had started forming in his head. "Sorry, I'm not, uh, interested?" Renjun said.

Jeno's brow furrowed.

"In the drugs," Renjun said. “Look, you can do what you want, but—”

"What? No," Jeno said. "They're supplements for blood loss."

"Oh," Renjun said. Jeno had no reason to lie, and he’d never acted like a dealer. But if there was one thing Renjun had learned from Yuta, it was that anyone could deal in shady substances. More uncertainly, he asked, "You got them for me?"

Jeno's brow furrowed again. "I didn’t get them for you. I just happened to have them lying around, and I thought you could use them."

“Oh, okay. Thanks.”

He pressed the bag into Renjun's hand. "You should take them on days when you’ve lost a lot of blood. Sparingly because I can't get any more this month," Jeno said.

"You can't get any more...?"

"All the vampire students can get some each month," Jeno said.

"If that's all you get, I can't take this." He tried to hand the bag back but Jeno wouldn’t take it. "At least take some of it back. I don't need all of it."

"Just take it. I can get more in a week."

Renjun continued to hold the bag out to Jeno, and it dangled in the air between them.

"Why do they give this out to vampires anyway?"

"It's in case you go too far."

"Does that happen a lot?"

"Not a lot, but it happens. Happens more often with people you feed off consistently, like human pets. They're the ones who use the pills most of the time."

Renjun felt like he'd been sucker-punched in the gut. He didn't reel back, but he wanted to. Suddenly there wasn't enough oxygen in the room. "You have human pets?"

"No, not right now," Jeno said. Casual, like it was nothing.

"Did you? Before?" Renjun was aware his voice had started to take on a half-hysterical edge, a half-pitch too high to be natural. He wasn't able to stop it.

"No, it's mostly older vampires that have pets. Some of the upperclassmen do."

The skin on Renjun's arms prickled. Renjun did take a step back then. "Right. Upperclassmen. Of course."

"What's up with you?"

Renjun needed to get out of the room. He needed more air. And were the lights too bright? They were too bright.

"I've got to go. Bathroom," he managed to squeeze out, and rushed out of the room. He left Jeno standing alone in the room, mouth open halfway, watching him go. It was a stupid excuse, but Renjun couldn't care. The lights in the hallway felt too bright still. The sides of the hallway too close, closing in as he walked, until he was no longer walking but running. Even as he ran, they converged on him, folding in, two sides of solid wood about to collide and fold him in between them.

He ran out of the building, and burst into fresh air. He kept running until he reached the edge of campus, where he stopped. He bent forward over his knees and gulped in air.

He had forgotten that he was still holding the bag of pills.

He wanted to throw it against the side of the road, but instead he shoved it into his bag and tried to breathe.

* * *

A hand jerked Renjun's jaw up and shoved him against the wall. The fingers pressed into his skin, too close to the jugular, with almost enough pressure to choke.

"Caught you," Jae said.

"Let me go," Renjun said, with a calmness he didn't feel. There was a maniac gleam in Jae's eye, something too knowing. It was beyond the usual contempt overlaid with hatred. "The professors aren't going to be okay with this." Not like Renjun would snitch, but Jae didn't know that.

The gleam in Jae's eye grew, infused with a tinge of triumph, and Renjun knew something was wrong. He tried to parse out what it was, but he had no inkling. That scared him.

"The professors aren't going to be okay with this," Jae said. Spoke with his normal voice, but it was nothing less than a victory cry. Jae pulled up his phone, unlocked the screen, and shoved it into Renjun's face.

Renjun couldn't speak.

The photo on the screen was grainy, taken with a phone not made for night imagery, but it didn’t need to be clear. Anyone could tell it was Jeno and him, Jeno's lips on his bleeding arm. Even though the blood wasn't much more than a dark smear against his skin, it was a smear of dark red.

Renjun saw his own grainy face, and a surge of nausea roiled in his stomach.

It looked like—like he liked it. More than liked it, with his lips parted and his eyes closed. That anyone else had seen this, that Jae had seen this—

"It's not what it looks like," Renjun said. With his heart jackhammering against his chest, it was less than convincing.

Jae smiled. He knew. "Do you want to see if other people agree with you?" He scrolled down his contacts, and started to select some of the names. Some fourth years Renjun knew, and others Renjun didn't.

"Don't," Renjun said. He tried to snatch at the phone, but Jae jerked it away.

"I don't think so," Jae said.

"Don't," Renjun said again. "Please." He was pleading now, and at the sound of the weakness in his own voice, the nausea rose again.

Jae's smile widened. He slowly and deliberately deselected the contacts, and put his phone back into his pocket. "I was wondering why Jeno was okay with having you around. Now I know. I was surprised, to be honest. I'm still surprised that's enough for him, really."

"What do you want?" Renjun's voice came out sharp, breathy because Jae's hand was still on his neck and it was getting harder to breathe.

"Watch your tone," Jae chided, still smiling. "But I'm glad you understand what's important. That's right. What I want."

Jae's grip tightened and he turned Renjun's face from side to side. "For starters, give me some of what Jeno's getting."

"I'm not going to—"

Jae tapped his pocket with the phone.

Renjun shuddered. He sagged in defeat, and knew Jae could tell he had won. He wanted to close his eyes, to avoid seeing that he'd lost, who he'd lost to, and the knowledge of what he was going to lose, but he didn't.

He owed himself to endure with his eyes open.

The maniac gleam in Jae's eyes grew, and he leaned in toward Renjun. Renjun registered at the last moment that Jae was going for his neck, and with understanding came an ice cold bolt of panic. He wasn't, he couldn't let—

Renjun grabbed at his magic, and cut. He could barely use magic properly, and the lines sliced across his arm in a messy crisscross. They slashed deep, deeper than skin. He could only, barely, think that it'd be better than his throat.

The smell of blood perfumed the air, and Jae's head snapped to the side. Before he could question where the blood came from, Renjun shoved his arm in Jae's face.

"Have at it then," he said. He tried not to make it sound like he was begging.

He didn't think Jae noticed. Jae's hand dropped from his jaw, and he grabbed Renjun's arm, his fingers pressing hard enough to bruise. He sucked greedily on the blood, and Renjun counted in his head. _1, 2, 3, 4, 5, his lips are on my, 6, 7, 8, his lips are on my—don’t think—9, 10. Repeat. 1, 2, 3, his lips are on my arm. Don't think._

Renjun imagined disassociating from his body. Vaguely he thought that magic should be able to do that. He imagined he couldn't hear slurping or feel warm saliva against his skin. A familiar feeling to him now. Jae was a messy eater, and a tendril of saliva ran down the side of Renjun's arm. Renjun imagined that his arm was dead.

Renjun saw Jae's fangs come out. He saw Jae go for the bite. The surge of nausea swelled up, a wave tall enough to devour.

Renjun clutched with wild desperation at any strand of his magic he could find, but his mind was whirring too fast to gather much together. He grabbed and grabbed.

He had no time. He pushed.

Jae reeled back. He staggered, and almost fell.

Jae must have thought another vampire had done it, because he looked around the room, his eyes wild.

"That's enough for today," he said, trying to recover his composure, only half-succeeding. It gave Renjun no satisfaction. Jae smiled at Renjun, showing all his teeth, and left.

Renjun slid down against the wall, and covered his face with his hands.

* * *

Renjun huddled with YangYang at the back of one of the rooms in the creation magic hut. They'd stretched out a white cloth between two sides of the wall. Sometimes they projected movies on it. Renjun wrapped a blanket around himself like he did when it got cold. Today it felt like he was hiding in it.

If YangYang wondered why he wrapped himself up all the way to his head, he said nothing.

"Let me show you something cool," YangYang said.

"Why do I have the feeling this is a bad idea?"

"Do you want to see or not?"

"...Yes."

YangYang picked up one of his creations, a brown cockroach with long antennae and a habit of dropping in front of Renjun when he stayed late and the hall grew dim. YangYang swore it wasn't on purpose. Renjun said if he stepped on it, it wouldn't be on purpose either.

YangYang tapped the cockroach's shell and a light projected from the top of the cockroach's head onto the cloth.

Grainy gray covered the cloth, lighter lines interspersed with darker ones. Renjun could make out the shifting of shadows. He heard rustling, and distorted noise.

Something large crashed down through the screen.

"...important meeting. Watch your words."

"Is that..." Renjun started. "Is that Professor Seo?"

YangYang shrugged. "Probably? Only met him once when he screened me for the transfer process. He offered me a spot on attack magic, but I didn't want it." Renjun resisted the urge to smack YangYang. YangYang didn't sound like he was boasting, which made Renjun want to smack him more—he probably had no idea how many witches for kill for that chance.

Another voice responded. "I can handle myself." An annoyed, familiar voice.

"Professor Park," Renjun breathed. "That’s interesting."

"Shall we follow them?" YangYang asked.

"What are you talking about?" Renjun said.

The camera moved forward after the large crashing objects Renjun now recognized as shoes. The camera itself moved with a familiar skittering motion. Renjun saw the flash of a leg.

"This is one of your automatons?"

"Connected camera. Cool, huh?"

"Cool," Renjun echoed, impressed enough that he couldn't think of another response, though he kind of wished he had when YangYang smirked.

YangYang's automaton followed the professors into a building. It stayed close to the wall, and no one seemed to notice as it climbed up a stand in the back and perched on top.

They saw grainy images of people settling themselves into rows, facing a central circle where two people stood.

A voice from the side spoke, "The assembly is called." Chatter died to silence.

"The first order of business, and the most important one, is the matter of possible demonic activity," said one of the people in the center, her voice cold and musical. "Five promising young members of our training squadrons are missing, and the only one to return has lost his memories, possibly permanently. It is time to send in more force to root out the cause."

The other person spoke, a male voice equally cold but with none of the music. "I disagree, Taeyeon. We need more information."

"We have enough information. Memory loss, missing youths, reports of a cage of thorns. Don't you see the signs?"

"The cage of thorns was reported by a youth under duress, who has been noted as an unreliable witness by his former professors."

They were close enough to Park and Seo to see a grainy Seo turn to Park and say something.

"You want to wait until the situation becomes unrecoverable? Maybe some of you witches are too young to remember those days. But we do."

"We hesitate to resort to force when we do not know the extent of the danger. Vampires may believe that striking with force is always the right action, as that is your main talent, but witches have other duties we must attend to. We need to reinforce our protections, and assess the danger."

More back and forth, then the person who had called the start to the assembly pounded a gavel and said, "The floor is open for comment."

Professor Park stood up. Professor Seo made a gesture at him to sit back down, but he didn’t.

"Doesn't anyone else find it odd that among all six of the missing youths the only one that returned was a vampire? How do we know this isn't a ploy by the vampires to get the witches to send out all our forces and leave ourselves defenseless?" Professor Park said.

A murmur ran around the room. Several others stood up.

"We would never—"

"Don’t listen to him, he doesn’t know—"

“How do we know you’re not the ones trying to incite—”

Professor Park was jerked back down by Professor Seo as the room descended into the polite adult equivalent of chaos. No movement except for those rising from their seats, no shouting, but voices that cut over one another, words blending together in a way that made it impossible to pick out the speaker.

It looked like Seo was about to shout at Park, the movements of his mouth punctuated with gesticulating, but Renjun couldn’t tell for sure. The video started to cut out.

“Damn, I think it’s running out of juice. Didn’t think it would run out so fast,” YangYang said.

More people got to their feet, and the din of the voices rose.

"I think that's enough," said a voice from behind them. They turned to see Professor Koon standing at the door, her parakeet perched on her shoulder.

YangYang's eyes went wide. He fumbled and dropped his cockroach. It fell with a tinny whine. Renjun caught it before it hit the ground.

"You aren’t supposed to see this," Koon said. She stared at the screen, the grainy scene of the assembly hall still playing behind them, though now tilted at a 45 degree angle. Renjun quickly tapped the cockroach's shell, and the scene cut off.

"Witch and vampire relations aren't what they used to be," Koon said, her eyes still on the blank white sheet. “And if vampires thought witches were spying on them, there would be consequences beyond any punishment I can give. Do you understand?”

Renjun swallowed. “Yes, professor,” they said in unison.

“I’m very displeased with you both.” She sounded more troubled than angry.

* * *

Donghyuck whistled as they stood in front of the Asomateus gates, waiting to be waved through.

"This is a nice place," he said. The vampire checking their invites smiled at that. Renjun thought the smile a hint past politeness, but maybe that was his imagination. Something about the night had him a hint on edge, a glitter dusting of tension that had less to do with his dislike of large scale social events than he was willing to admit.

Their invites checked out, and they went in.

Renjun wondered briefly if Jae would be at the party. He might live at Asomateus. Renjun brushed off the thought before it could form anything coherent, neatly sidestepping a pit that yawned somewhere in the base of his gut.

They went to the right wing, where Jeno and Jaemin's apartment was, and where the party was held. Jaemin had told them that the different wings of the building held their own bashes, except for the end of the year bash that was hosted by the entirety of Asomateus. Something always happened at that party, a fight, people losing their clothes and running naked across the courtyard, once the human police getting called—to this day no one had figured out how that happened. Jaemin relayed these details like it would make them more excited to come. It worked on Donghyuck because he was also crazy.

Renjun felt the vibration of music before he heard it, pulsing beats that traveled up the soles of his feet. He wished he'd brought earplugs, despite how markedly uncool they’d make him.

When they opened the door, the sound of chatter hit him first. The music wasn't as loud as he'd expected, though the beat jolted each step he took. More vibration than noise. The hallway inside was packed. Bodies milled around, people shouting greetings at each other. "Hey, I haven't seen you in forever, what's up?" and "You're here too?" Renjun and Donghyuck pushed through the crowd, past groups gathered by the walls, some people holding plastic cups out of place with the gaudy portraits of famous vampires they stood next to. If Renjun hadn’t been focused on not losing Donghyuck in the crowd, he would have been amused that they served their drinks in plastic cups. Supernatural or human, easy cleanup was easy cleanup.

"Loosen up," Donghyuck said. Renjun tried, rolling back his shoulders and thinking about how this had to be better than another chapter of Histories of Humanity. Tried not to think that the chapter he skipped now was waiting fondly for his return tomorrow.

"Do I look nervous?" Renjun asked.

"Nah, but I can tell. Can't blame you. Anyone would be nervous around someone as perfect as me."

Renjun glared at Donghyuck and elbowed him in the chest. That shoved Donghyuck into someone behind them, who glared at them both before marching away.

The common area had been cleared out. Renjun could make out a dance floor, some larger couches, a dj setup, and a makeshift bar. Someone had hung up a light over the dance floor that flashed through three colors, red, green, and blue. It was too dim to see much else. People melded into indistinct silhouettes in the shadows.

Renjun thought he saw Mark, but Donghyuck pulled him along before he could be sure.

They settled into one of the couches with cups of witch brew. Renjun savored the burn of it down his throat, though he cringed at the taste. They’d made it strong. He had to remind himself not to have too much. It wouldn't be smart to get plastered around so many vampires, but he didn't want to deal with it sober either.

"We're never going to find Jaemin," Donghyuck said.

"A real pity," Renjun said.

"Aw, you missed me?" Jaemin said, appearing in front of them as if summoned by his name. Renjun almost dropped his drink. _Speak of the devil and he shall appear,_ Renjun thought sullenly.

They chatted for a while. Various friends of Jaemin passed by and sometimes joined in. Donghyuck grew restless. Renjun recognized that look in his eye—he wanted to talk to other people, he wanted to dance, he wanted to drag Renjun into something he'd regret soon after.

On cue, Donghyuck said, "Let's go dance."

Before Renjun could stop him, he grabbed them both by the hand and led them onto the dance floor. Surrounded by bodies, past the point of escape, Renjun let himself sway to the music. Jaemin bounced up and down, and Donghyuck did something halfway sexy and halfway crude with his hips. Renjun found himself smiling. It was easy to forget himself here, just another body moving with the beat, no one caring who he was or what he was doing.

He got tired before Donghyuck and Jaemin did, sweaty and flush with heat. "Water," he said, and made his escape, waving them off. He could tell they wanted to stay.

He wedged himself into a corner of another couch, sipped what remained of his drink, and thought about actually getting that water. The clock had just passed 2:30.

"Hey, I didn't think I'd see you here again," a voice said. The pretty female vampire he'd seen the first time he'd been to Asomateus plopped herself down next to him.

"Hey..." Renjun said.

"Mina," she supplied.

"Renjun. Thanks for last time."

"No problem."

She was easy to talk to, and time passed before he knew it. Halfway through a sentence, the music cut off. The lights dimmed further, almost to blackness.

Renjun looked around, bewildered. He felt it again, that thread of tension, taut as a wire. Some of the people stilled around him. Was it just him, or had the groups dispersed? People clumped in twos and threes. Time seemed to stop, stretching like a rubber band, a freeze frame of figures in darkness. Something about the way they looked at each other caught and held in his mind. He could almost taste it. Salt and perspiration. Expectancy.

The rubber band snapped. Time moved again, at double-speed.

In front of his eyes, a boy tilted his head back, and a girl sank her teeth into his neck. The boy let out a soft sigh. Renjun went cold, as if he had swallowed ice. He couldn't move. He told himself he didn't know what was happening, but he did know. The ice didn't go down smooth, but in shards, each a cold dagger stabbing into his gut as the scene repeated itself around the room. It didn't happen all the same way. Some were bodies tangled together into a couch, some standing, some where a witch pushed the vampire down. Multi-layered iterations of the same nightmare.

His eyes caught on someone on the dance floor.

Jeno with his fingers entangled in the hair of a pretty female witch. An upperclassman, vaguely familiar. Jeno pulled her closer, until their bodies had no space between them.

Renjun didn’t know why he felt like he’d swallowed more ice. Jeno was a vampire. Why wouldn’t he be doing what they all were?

Jeno's head lifted, and against all odds his eyes met Renjun's across the floor.

Renjun didn’t think Jeno recognized him at first. Jeno’s eyes were hazy, dark, and— A shiver ran down Renjun’s spine. And so, so hungry. Then Jeno’s vision sharpened. When he saw Renjun, his hand stilled in the witch’s hair. He shifted back a little, with a hint of embarrassment. Renjun turned away. Jeno clearly didn't want him to see, and he would respect that boundary.

"Renjun?" Mina's attention lingered meaningfully on Renjun's throat.

The nausea was rising again. "I'm sorry, I don't—"

Mina blinked at the tone of his voice, a little taken aback. "Oh, it's okay if you don't want to. I thought..."

Renjun shook his head. He couldn't speak. He was grateful she didn't seem upset.

"Hey, you okay?"

She reached out a hand as if to touch his shoulder, but it never got there. Another hand closed around Renjun's wrist and wrenched him up from the couch. He was pulled away from Mina, past bodies in the dark he tried not to look at, half stumbling. He thought he saw Mark again.

The hand kept pulling Renjun onward until he was out of the common area and into the hall, up the elevator, and into a suite he'd been to once before.

Jeno half-pushed him into the room. "Why are you here? It's blood hour."

"I didn't know," Renjun said. His hands shook now that they'd made it out of the party.

"You didn't know," Jeno repeated, mocking. "Have you never been to a vampire party before?"

"Only that other one."

"Let me guess, you didn't want her to bite you."

Renjun didn't have to say anything.

"Donghyuck did say you were a prude. You're lucky I saw you." Donghyuck had been talking about him to Jeno? Renjun would have been offended, but it didn't seem important now. It was better that Jeno thought him a prude than anything else.

Jeno ran a hand over his face. "I can't believe this." He looked pissed and hungry, and Renjun remembered the witch downstairs that he'd had to leave behind. Renjun felt a stirring of gratefulness, and with it guilt. With great reluctance, Jeno added, "You can stay here until it's over."

Renjun willed his voice not to shake. "Thanks," he said. It kept playing over in his head, the same nightmare, the same dream. "You don't have to stay with me. I won't touch your stuff, promise. I don't want you to, uh, miss out."

He didn't want Jeno to let go of his wrist. The solidity of Jeno's hand stabilized him.

"Do you want me to go?" Jeno's voice was soft. He sounded hungry still.

Jeno stood close enough that Renjun could trace the lines of his collarbones.

"No," Renjun said. He didn't know what made him say it. Maybe he was out of his mind.

Jeno still hadn't let go of Renjun's wrist. Renjun could feel his hunger now, ebbing off him in waves. He could feel Jeno trying to hold it back in the way Jeno’s hand tightened on his wrist, holding himself apart. Knowing that Jeno was holding himself back sparked something hot under Renjun’s rib cage, right below his heart. It was dangerous.

Renjun should let him go.

"You should go," he said, stepping closer. He put his hand over Jeno's, intending to peel Jeno's fingers off his wrist, intending to push him out the door so he could go back and get what he wanted. Renjun wasn't going to ruin the party for him.

Jeno's other hand caught his.

"I don't get you sometimes," Jeno said. They stood facing each other. Heat gathered between their intertwined fingers, an odd sensation Renjun thought had to be imagined because Jeno's hand was cold as always.

"You're hungry," Renjun said. Jeno blinked slowly, as if the words were hard to understand. A hooded, half-dazed stare. Renjun knew this was when he was supposed to let go of Jeno's hand and shake him hard.

But maybe Renjun was hungry too.

Jeno leaned his head against Renjun's shoulder. "A little," he murmured.

His breath sent a shiver down Renjun's neck. It ran to the base of his spine, where it pooled hot and thick.

Jeno nosed at the side of Renjun's neck.

"You smell good," he said absently.

Heat rushed up to Renjun's face. "I do not _smell_ good."

“You smell good.” Jeno's breath feathered over Renjun's pulse point. Renjun couldn't tell if Jeno was shaking, or he was. "You have to stop me," Jeno said. Renjun barely heard him.

Whatever had sparked beneath Renjun’s chest had caught fire, and he was burning up. He knew he shouldn't. Should not, should not, should not. A chant, a libation, a plea. He put a hand against Jeno's cheek, the beat of his heart so loud he was sure Jeno could feel the vibrations through his hand, like the beat of the music below.

It'd be easy to push him away. Jeno didn't want this any more than he did. Jeno rested his face against Renjun's hand, as if waiting for it. He was shaking.

"I don't want to stop," Renjun said.

The balance tipped. Not much, but it didn’t need much. Jeno’s lips pressed against Renjun's pulse point.

Jeno's teeth sank into Renjun's neck.

Renjun hissed as two pinpricks of pain lanced across his throat, but it didn't last long. Euphoria more agonizing than pain drove away any other thought in his head. He remembered that once he'd have done anything to get more of this.

He was dimly aware of Jeno pressing him back against the kitchen counter. Dimly aware that he wrapped his arms around Jeno's neck, and tilted his head back for better access. The movements came to him as natural as breathing.

He was human after all. Some part of him had always wanted this. Wanted it even more when he had it, clawing at Jeno to draw him in closer. He was satisfied when Jeno's fangs sank in deeper.

He was that boy he'd seen downstairs, and he felt good.

Jeno drew back, and they stared at each other. The side of his mouth was stained red with Renjun's blood.

Coming back to his senses felt somewhat like hurtling to earth. A crash landing, no safety pad to catch him.

He was that boy he'd seen downstairs, and he felt sick.

Jeno wiped the blood off the side of his mouth, and licked what he'd wiped from the back of his hand. He backed off of Renjun. Renjun pushed himself up off the counter too fast, and the world tilted dangerously.

He saw Jeno reach for him, and avoided it, trying not to make it too obvious that he was avoiding it. He couldn’t tell if Jeno noticed. He used the counter to steady himself.

Jeno watched him, and Renjun’s attention riveted to his lips, to a speck of darker red at the corner of his mouth he hadn’t gotten off. Renjun could help him with that—

"Was that okay?" Jeno asked. He leaned against the counter. With his hunger stated, he seemed completely at ease. There was no reason he shouldn’t be. He probably did this all the time.

Normal. Right. This was normal.

Renjun had never noticed how the moonlight shone against Jeno’s skin—

"Yeah. Fine. Why not? I should find Donghyuck," Renjun said. He pulled his hood over his head. "Catch you in class."

Renjun found Donghyuck downstairs mumbling into an armchair. When he saw Renjun, he got teary-eyed, and slurred something incoherent. Once Renjun got close enough, he clung onto Renjun’s waist, almost dragging the both of them down.

“You’re wasted,” Renjun said.

“Where’d you go?” Donghyuck cried. His jacket was disheveled, and he had a smudge of what looked like lipstick over his left eye. “I left you alone.”

“I left you alone,” Renjun said. Donghyuck sounded so sad about it that Renjun didn’t have the heart to say anything else. “Sorry.”

“You’re sorry? I’m sorry,” Donghyuck said, a muffled noise into Renjun’s jacket.

Renjun hefted Donghyuck up, pulling Donghyuck’s arm over his shoulder, and they somehow made their way home. Donghyuck kept saying into his ear, "Where were you? I was looking all over for you. I forgot you didn't know, and I didn't realize the time. I should have found you earlier." Saying sorry over and over again.

Renjun smiled at him weakly. He couldn't tell him it was already too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't have too much to say about this chapter, i'm kinda brain fried at the moment  
> but thanks for reading!


	20. to want

For the first time in a long time, Renjun didn't dream of a forest. His dreams were filled with three colored lights flashing over a dance floor, a head tilting back, lips on someone's throat. Lips on his throat. Haze-colored memories, all twisted in his head.

In his dreams, he begged Jeno for it.

As always, he woke up in a sweat.

When he couldn't go back to sleep, he stumbled into the bathroom and ran his head under cold water.

* * *

Donghyuck was up bright and early the day after the party, no sign of a hangover as usual.

"How do you do that?" Renjun asked.

"What?" Donghyuck said, and Renjun didn't grace him with a response. Renjun hadn't had much the night before, so he wasn't that jealous of Donghyuck's alcohol recovery skills. He still hadn't ruled out the possibility that Donghyuck was doing something illegal.

Donghyuck took in the clothes Renjun was wearing, sweats and a hoodie. Nothing out of the norm. Renjun had looked in the bathroom mirror earlier, and stared at the place where Jeno's teeth sunk into his neck. The skin had healed. When he stood straight his neck seemed unblemished, but when he leaned over the sink, closer to the mirror, he saw two faint dots a shade pinker than the rest of his skin. He wouldn’t have seen them if he wasn’t looking for them.

It'd healed so fast Jeno couldn't have taken much blood from him. Or maybe his body had gotten used to Jeno's saliva, and contact with it spurred him to heal faster.

Renjun’s first instinct was to cover it up. He'd dashed back into his room, pulled his three turtlenecks out of the closet and thrown them across the bed. He'd already pulled one over his head before he realized that would be a bad move. Donghyuck might not notice the barely visible dots of pink against his neck, but he would notice a turtleneck.

It'd still taken him a solid minute to take the turtleneck off.

"Did something happen last night?" Donghyuck said, voice tinged with an uncertainty, a carefulness that wasn't like Donghyuck, and it almost threw Renjun back to his own uncertainty when he'd faced the mirror, water dripping from his hair, staring at his own reflection. Not sure who it was staring back at him, with brazen want and desperation a step below the surface. Renjun needed Donghyuck to be like Donghyuck. He needed Donghyuck to crack a joke, or act like Renjun should feel indebted to him for making him go out last night and ask him hadn't it been worth it? So Renjun could complain about how much it really hadn't been worth it.

"Nothing happened," Renjun said.

"Nothing?" Donghyuck still sounded so careful.

"Nothing bad happened. I may have let Jeno have some of my blood," Renjun said. "You know, the way we do in class."

Donghyuck's shoulders sagged and he leaned his head back against the top of the chair. He relaxed. "I was scared that—never mind. So everything's fine then."

"Yeah, it's all fine," Renjun said. "Better than usual since I don't have a hangover."

Donghyuck waved a finger at Renjun. "Our first party at Asomateus and you didn’t let loose."

"I'm not about to let loose around all those vampires—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

Renjun didn't want to talk about the party anymore. It got him too close to thinking about—

"Wait, did I tell you about what YangYang and I overheard during crafts the other day?" Renjun asked. "He was using his—" Renjun's throat closed up, and he broke off, coughing. That paper they'd signed for Koon didn't let them talk about what they made during creation magic, though it allowed him to talk about other aspects of the class, like conversations with YangYang or what movie they’d watched last Thursday. He wasn't sure what the limits of the spell were. Renjun found out he could say that YangYang sicced a cockroach on him, but he couldn't say it was a cockroach YangYang had made. "We accidentally overheard part of some assembly meeting with witches and vampires."

Donghyuck leaned forward in his chair. "Repeat that. An assembly meeting?"

* * *

Renjun ducked out of the way when he saw a flash of midnight black hair and felt the brush of a familiar aura against his skin. A vein at the side of his neck throbbed.

He couldn't resist. He peered around the corner and saw the side of Jeno's face as he walked down the hallway talking to Jaemin. Jeno laughed at something Jaemin said, and Renjun saw the edge of his canines, sharper than a human's.

Renjun took half a step forward. It wasn't fair that Jeno was flaunting his canines so carelessly, when they should be Renjun's, when they should be on Renjun's throat...

What was wrong with him? He pushed himself backward, turning on his heel, and headed away. He ignored the steady pulse of heat at his throat.

* * *

When he saw Jeno in class his hand rose to his neck. He touched the place Jeno had bitten him without thinking, and heat spread across his neck and down his back. He jerked his hand back down.

Renjun thought Jeno's eyes tracked the movement of his hand, but it was probably a trick of the light. Jeno was looking toward the front, not at him. His body flushed hot, even as his insides curdled. He wanted Jeno to look at him. Not even look at him, but at his throat.

Jeno shouldn’t ignore him like this when he could—

"Renjun, do you have a question?"

Renjun froze, his hand raised halfway in the air. He stared at his hand.

They were sitting in the middle of a lecture.

"Can I go to the bathroom?" he asked.

Professor Kim pursed her lips with displeasure, but she let him go. He stood too fast, making him a little dizzy. He gave a wide berth to Jeno, and half-tripped over someone's bag on the way out. Some students laughed. Their laughter didn't register much to him.

His feet took him to the bathroom. He waited for the other person there to clear out, before he turned the water on. He splashed cold water on his face.

"Wake up. Wake the hell up," he told himself. He stared at himself in the mirror. There was no blemish where the bite had been. Anyone who saw him would have no idea that it had ever happened. Yet he knew the exact spot where teeth had pierced his skin. He could feel it.

_Wake up._ The eyes in the mirror flashed orange-yellow. He thought he saw blood dripping down the side of his neck. He jerked backward. Then he was staring at himself again. Dark-brown eyes, the unblemished skin of his neck, water dripping down his face.

His heart hammered against his chest.

One bite and he was half-unhinged. This was pathetic.

"Is everything okay?"

Renjun whirled around to see Jeno standing in the doorway of the bathroom. Jeno leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. He looked casual, completely relaxed aside from a modicum of curiosity and a bit less of concern. Renjun hated him for it.

Everything was fine. Everything was great. Renjun just wanted Jeno to eat him every time he saw him.

"Just tired. Needed to wake myself up a little," Renjun said. Water ran down into his shirt, and he was suddenly conscious of Jeno watching it. "Did you follow me?"

"No, I needed to go to the bathroom too," Jeno said.

"Okay, then go ahead," Renjun said.

"I don't need you to tell me that."

Renjun left the bathroom more awake but wishing he wasn't. He forgot to dry his face.

* * *

Renjun tried to imagine he was somewhere else as Jeno’s tongue ran over his arm. It was hard enough to sit next to Jeno, this close to when it’d happened. He’d only managed earlier by blocking from his mind that Jeno’s tongue would be on his body mere hours later.

This was torture.

Without thinking, he tangled one hand into Jeno’s hair. Jeno tensed against his hand. Renjun never touched him when they did this.

Renjun withdrew the hand. He held it down to his side where it belonged. Where it had to stay.

Jeno finished licking Renjun’s arm, and lifted his head.

That couldn’t be it. That wasn’t enough.

Renjun’s neck throbbed.

Jeno couldn’t keep his eyes from lingering on Renjun’s throat. A normal vampire reaction—they would zero in on it even if they weren’t thinking about taking blood. The heat of it made Renjun tilt his head to the side, inadvertently exposing the length of his neck. Or had he done it on purpose? It was hard to tell.

Jeno’s eyes darkened, the pupils widening. Renjun felt a thrill at knowing he had caused that.

It scared him. He forced his head back to the front, and pressed the back of his hand against the rough bark of the tree behind him. It distracted him.

Then Jeno leaned in, and Renjun forgot any feeling against his hand. Even the tingling of his arm as the cuts closed up faded to the background. He couldn’t look away from the shine of Jeno’s white canines.

Jeno dipped his head toward Renjun, and Renjun’s blood thrummed.

He wanted the bite.

Jeno moved slowly. It was torture. Renjun lifted a hand to jerk him forward.

“You have the supplements, right?” Jeno asked.

Renjun stopped just as his hand touched the side of Jeno’s face. Coldness spread from his fingertips down his arm. _Human pets are the ones who use the pills, most of the time._ He saw a vacant gaze, humans plodding after their master. Wanting only to please, to serve, to offer their blood. Humans like him.

Renjun’s arm fell to his side.

Jeno cupped the back of Renjun’s neck with one hand, but Renjun put both hands on Jeno’s chest and shoved. It wouldn’t have worked if Jeno had been intent on getting blood, but he wasn’t as far down that tunnel as Renjun was. He hadn’t lost control of his senses. He stepped back, looking up and down from where Renjun had shoved him back to Renjun.

“What was that for?”

Renjun had gone numb. The cold had spread up his arm to his chest. Vacant gazes from husks emptied of most else.

“This wasn’t part of the deal,” Renjun said, his voice as cold as he felt.

“I thought you wanted to,” Jeno said.

He did want to.

Jeno stepped forward again, cocking his head to the side. “Didn’t you like it?” He was so sure of himself, and so sure Renjun would like it that he dared half a grin. An ugly feeling unfurled in Renjun’s chest.

“Don’t act like I’m you. Did my blood taste so good you couldn’t help yourself?” The ugly feeling rose, a taste of bile in the back of his throat. “Disgusting.”

The grin disappeared. One of Jeno’s hands curled into a claw at his side.

“Is that what you think?” Jeno said, his voice colder than Renjun’s had been.

Renjun had an irrational urge to throw himself at Jeno’s feet and cling to his legs, tell him no, that wasn’t what he thought. Tell him whatever he wanted to hear to get Jeno to bite him again. Renjun gritted his teeth. This was part of the process. The distance between them seemed to hurt physically. Maybe it did hurt—his neck still throbbed.

“Disgusting,” Renjun said again, across that distance. Driving a stake into that crack he’d created between them, and splitting it open into a chasm.

Renjun didn’t think Jeno was disgusting. He didn’t think that was possible. Even with that blank mask of fury, Jeno was beautiful. Renjun wasn’t sure if it was because he was human that he couldn’t see it any other way.

Lying to vampires was easier than Renjun had expected. Jeno didn’t know Renjun was talking about himself.

Jeno stalked away from him. Every fiber of Renjun’s body screamed at him as Jeno drew farther and farther away.

Don’t let him leave.

Don’t let him leave.

* * *

Chenle sat next to Jisung at a long table, in some parody of their childhood days. Back then he’d always sat next to Jisung, and he wouldn’t have noticed the adults around them. The two of them would have made a ruckus, and Jisung’s parents would have dragged them out while apologizing to the rest.

Now he sat stiff, resisting the urge to fidget around vampires from the upper echelons of society, some of them in the Night Council itself, others from families as prominent as Jisung’s.

He resisted the urge to look at his parents again, like he’d done multiple times in the past several minutes. The sickly sweet smiles they had on, so pleased to see him placed next to Jisung after so long, took away any comfort their familiarity might have given him.

Why was he here? It’d been years since he’d been chosen to sit with Jisung at the upper tables at one of these events. He glanced with longing at the lower tables his parents sat at, at the seat next to them which should have been his but was currently occupied by a slightly older vampire from another branch family. That vampire curled his lip at Chenle. Chenle almost curled his lip back—it wasn’t his fault he was here—but he saw the sickly smiles on his parents’ faces and turned back.

It was traditional for young vampires of the big families to sit next to a similar aged youth from one of their branch families. A symbol of the upper crust trying to develop bonds with their lessers, meant to promote some sense of equality. Mostly it turned into political jockeying between different branch families, but that could be part of the purpose too. Conflict kept them from unity.

Not all families followed the tradition. They might not have branch families with similar aged youths to their heirs, or they might not care to.

Several tables away, at the table of Taeyeon herself, Jeno sat between his mother and father. Jaemin was at the same table, but further down. He sat next to someone his parents had clearly chosen for him. Jaemin was usually friendly even to strangers, unusually friendly for a vampire some might say, but he ignored the boy’s attempts to talk to him, purposely turning his body to the other side.

Jisung’s parents weren’t so strict. Jisung had always been their treasure, born after centuries of no success, and he got to choose who sat next to him.

“I wonder what they’re going to talk about today,” the vampire next to Chenle said to him. Chenle startled. He hadn’t expected to be talked to.

The youths from branch families placed at the upper tables weren’t much more than ornaments, meant to keep the family heir entertained but otherwise ignored. If someone deigned to talk to him it was usually out of politeness or a misplaced sense of sympathy. Chenle kept his responses short, not interested in playing nice the way his parents wanted him to, and they were usually both happier for it.

“I don’t know,” Chenle said to the vampire beside him.

“Yeah, but what do you think they’re going to talk about?” The vampire was young, younger than Chenle by far, too young to care about status perhaps. Chenle would have indulged him if he didn’t see the parents’ disapproval from behind the boy’s back.

“No idea,” Chenle said, and the boy turned from him with disappointment.

Chenle hadn’t tried to talk to anyone. This included Jisung, which would come off more unusual to the onlookers and more disappointing to his parents, but he wasn’t trying to get invited back.

_Why don’t you want to talk to me? Why does it bother you so much to be here?_

Chenle didn’t shift in his seat, but it took some effort to resist glaring at Jisung. Jisung would choose to talk through the link while they sat in the middle of hundreds of other vampires.

_I don’t feel like talking._

_It’s like you don’t like me anymore._

_Are we really talking about this here?_

Someone more socially aware than Jisung might have taken this as a cue to stop talking, but Jisung, being the privileged darling heir he’d always been, plowed on.

_What did I do to you?_

That wasn’t an easy question to answer. It wasn’t like Jisung had done anything in particular. He’d just grown up. They’d both grown up. Jisung had made newer, cooler friends closer to his social strata, like Jeno and Jaemin. Jisung had gotten busy. He’d called Chenle over to hang out less and less, and when he did call Chenle up more and more it’d been to ask him to do something for him. When he asked, it sounded the way someone from a main family would order someone from a branch family around. Though Jisung’s requests ran more along the lines of ‘Help me with this homework problem’ rather than ‘Fetch me a human to feed on’.

The clincher? Jisung hadn’t noticed.

It’d happened naturally, just like they’d said. Something so unbalanced wasn’t made to last.

_You didn’t do anything_ , Chenle responded, feeling weary.

_Then why—_

Taeyeon’s voice cut through the conversations in the room. All went silent at her voice, though she didn’t speak very loud. She had stood.

“The witches refuse to look further into the subject of demons, but I am certain that is the wrong decision,” she said. “Many of you remember the devastation from when the great demons were unleashed upon the world.”

Murmured agreement went around the room. Taeyeon waited for it to die down.

“It is time for us, once again, to act upon our own counsel. We cannot wait for the witches to see reason. Those who disagree, please speak out now.”

A few vampires shifted uneasily, but most appeared neutral. Some seemed to grow eager.

“What of the training squadrons?” Jeno’s father asked. Chenle couldn’t tell from the inflection of his voice if he cared about the answer or not.

“We will continue to support them as we always have. They are still invaluable and will be in the time to come. The witches are our allies. However, that does not mean we cannot move independently.”

There were a few further questions, but no objections, and Taeyeon sat down. The conversations in the room returned at twice the volume, everyone eager to discuss Taeyeon’s words and what they would mean.

As the discussions flowed around them, Jisung poked Chenle in the side. Chenle almost yelped, and he did glare at Jisung this time. Maybe he’d give Jisung a piece of his mind and see how his parents liked that. He faltered when he saw Jisung had turned his body in his chair to face Chenle.

Jisung faced him with a determination that Chenle hadn’t seen since they were children and Jisung had insisted that he could climb to the top of the tallest tree on the estate.

“I’m going to fix this,” he said. He still had that old habit of picking up a conversation long after it was over, from the last place it’d been left off.

* * *

Each time Jeno walked away from him, Renjun heard the same four words in his head.

Don’t let him leave.

Jeno had been all business since their conversation. Renjun didn’t have to worry that Jeno would try to bite him, since Jeno no longer seemed to have any interest in it.

Not a day after their talk, Jeno had come to class with his arm around another witch, tall and gorgeous with gold highlights in his hair. Before class they’d sit together in the back of the auditorium, whispering to each other.

The witch wasn’t one of those Renjun disliked. He was one of the better ones. He hadn’t tried to be friends with Renjun, but he hadn’t laughed along when Renjun made a fool of himself in prior years.

Then Jeno would laugh at something the witch said, his eyes crinkling with genuine mirth, and Renjun would know he didn’t dislike the witch. He hated him. He wanted the witch to get hurt, not to the point of serious injury, just to the level where he could no longer sit curled up in someone else’s arms and tell funny jokes.

Renjun slapped his own cheeks lightly with both hands. Maybe Park had been right when he said humans were controlled by their emotions.

Jeno could do what he wanted. The witch could do what he wanted. That was their right. He was messed up in the head to want to interfere.

These feelings would go away over time. They had to. They had before.

It was worse when he didn’t hate the other witch. Instead, he would imagine himself in the witch’s place. He’d run a finger down Jeno’s chest and hook it into the side of his shirt—

He slapped himself again.

“What’s wrong with you?” Renjun turned. Donghyuck watched him with amusement, Chenle and Jaemin with some concern.

Renjun groaned. It was really getting bad if his friends thought something was wrong with him. “I just hate myself,” he said.

“Ah, so nothing new. Boring,” Donghyuck said.

Renjun attempted to shove Donghyuck off his chair while Donghyuck laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Jeno asked, joining them for the start of class.

Renjun’s hand slipped off Donghyuck, though Donghyuck was still laughing and didn’t notice.

“My boring life, apparently,” Renjun said. He allowed himself to be proud for a moment. He’d played it cool.

“Ah, and he admits it himself,” Donghyuck said. “That’s a new low.”

“I admitted nothing,” Renjun said, shoving Donghyuck again. He was happy to have a reason not to look at Jeno or his button-up silk shirt with one too many buttons popped open at the top.

He did notice when Jeno turned around and waved at the witch he’d been with. Renjun dug his fingers into his pants to keep from pulling Jeno back around by force. He swallowed down an absurd and completely uncalled for urge to climb into Jeno’s lap, bare his neck, and flip the other witch off. He swallowed down the much less absurd urge to slam his head into a wall. Maybe if he hit his head hard enough he’d get amnesia before he went insane.

Jeno came in with the witch every day. Sometimes his clothes or the witch’s clothes were in disarray. Renjun tried not to stare. He really, really tried.

Midway through the week, the witch came in sporting two glaring red marks against the side of his neck. He made no attempt to cover them up.

“That’s not a great look,” Jaemin said with some distaste. “I don’t know what Jeno’s thinking, going around with so...public.”

The witch got some ugly looks for trying to flaunt it, but not from Renjun.

Renjun didn’t know how he looked. He might have been salivating. Without conscious thought, he raised a hand to his own neck. His fingers found the long since healed spot.

The witch practically sat in Jeno’s lap. Jeno’s eyes somehow met Renjun’s across the room. A pure accident, Renjun was sure. His hand was still against his neck. He felt hot around his ears and under his collar.

Maybe Jeno didn’t notice that his eyes were still locked on Renjun’s. Jeno leaned down and kissed the witch’s neck against the points of red.

Renjun was up on his feet before he knew it. He pushed past the others in their seats in the row, ignoring their complaints. Renjun’s throat throbbed, pulsing so strong it was near violence.

He got past the end of the row. A few more steps and he was out the door. He moved away down the hall. No sense of purpose or where to go, just away.

Somewhere where the throbbing would stop.

_You know what would make this stop._ An insidious whisper in his head.

“Renjun,” someone called, and he turned. Jaemin caught his arm.

“You okay?”

Renjun registered that Jaemin was concerned about him, but he found it hard to focus on his words. They swam to him as if through a film of water. He followed the movements of Jaemin’s mouth instead, and saw the edge of a fang. He watched the fang.

_You know what would make this stop._

He half fell against Jaemin. His body felt hot and weak. He could feel that spot pulsing on his throat, and how close Jaemin was.

“Hey, hey,” Jaemin said, catching him with both hands.

Renjun clutched at the front of Jaemin’s shirt.

Renjun said—something. He wasn’t sure what it was, just that Jaemin’s eyes widened and he was going to refuse and Renjun couldn’t take it if Jaemin refused.

He grasped Jaemin more urgently. Said it again. Made out the words this time.

“Bite me.”

“Renjun, I think you’re feverish. You’re really hot,” Jaemin said, but he didn’t push Renjun away. His fingers tightened on Renjun’s elbows.

Jaemin would help him. Jaemin would make it go away. Renjun just needed to push a little more.

Jaemin tucked his fingers under Renjun’s chin, searching his face.

“Don’t be so slow about it,” Renjun said.

Jaemin’s fingers tightened on Renjun’s chin, his touch becoming less gentle. “I don’t think you know what you’re asking,” Jaemin said, though there was an edge to it. A shade of hunger.

Renjun was about to tilt his head back when someone shoved the two of them apart. Renjun staggered back a couple steps. He took another step back himself, going cold. Had he just…?

“Jeno,” Jaemin said. He sounded surprised, but unbothered. “Did you miss us already? I think Junnie needs to go to the med ward. He’s burning up.”

“I’m fine,” Renjun said. He was now. Neither of them reacted.

Jaemin was searching Jeno’s face now, but he didn’t get much out of it. Jeno’s face had gone scarily blank, the way it did when he zoned out in class. Or when he was very, very pissed.

“I’ll take him to the med ward. There’s some partner stuff I wanted to ask. You can go back first,” Jeno said.

“Okay, I’ll see you in a bit then. Feel better soon, Renjun,” Jaemin said.

“I’m feeling fine,” Renjun said. Wait, Jaemin was just going to leave him alone with Jeno?

“You should still get checked out,” Jaemin said as he headed off, missing the pleading looks Renjun tried to direct his way.

When he was gone, Jeno turned to Renjun and hissed, “So it’s okay if it’s Jaemin?”

“I never said—”

“You asked him to bite you. He’s not disgusting?”

Renjun’s neck started to throb again, slow and painful. He found it hard to think straight. Jaemin wasn’t disgusting and Jeno wasn’t either. Jeno should bite him. They both should, if that would end this.

Renjun almost said it aloud, until he remembered that pretty witch. Dots of red against smooth skin. Vacant eyes. Wanting. Wanting.

“What does it matter to you?”

Jeno’s face contorted. Renjun marveled at it. How could he look so good when he was angry? “You’re right. It doesn’t.”

“Seems like you can have any other witch you want. Are you that hung up on this?”

Jeno laughed, low and bitter. “I’m really not. Any other witch is better than you.” Renjun had known that already, but it still hurt to hear the words from Jeno’s mouth. It hurt more than it should. “But if you have the energy to insult me, you can go to the med ward yourself.”

Jeno strode away. He didn’t look back.

Don’t let him leave, that stupid part of Renjun’s brain repeated. It would go away soon, just as Jeno had gone away. They all went away in the end.

Renjun made his way to the med ward on his own.

“You’re just skipping class, aren’t you?” Ten asked, as Renjun curled up in one of the beds. Renjun didn’t deny it, but Ten didn’t kick him out.

* * *

They switched partners at the end of March. This time they got to submit preferences, though the professors said there were no guarantees.

The timing was good. Between Renjun and Jeno it’d come to terse, one word responses. They did the perfunctory minimum to keep up, and didn’t talk before or after they shared blood.

Luck was on Renjun’s side because he got partnered with Chenle.

Jeno was partnered with Donghyuck, and Jaemin with another high ranking witch.

All was as it should be.

* * *

“So how are you doing with that witch partner?” Doyoung asked. “You haven’t brought him over so I assume things got better?”

“We switched partners,” Jeno said shortly.

“Ah,” Doyoung said. He sounded oddly disappointed.

“My new partner’s better,” Jeno assured him. It was true. Renjun hadn’t been lying when he called Donghyuck a prodigy. With the two of them, being top of class came as a given. That was what Jeno had wanted from the start.

“Remember when you asked about Kun’s journal last time?” Doyoung asked.

Jeno started. “You didn’t have to think too much about it,” he said.

“After you reminded me of it, I just wanted to make sure it was in good hands,” Doyoung said. “It’s in the safekeeping of one of the witch professors. Do you know much about a Professor Koon?”

* * *

Jeno hadn’t talked to Renjun for weeks aside from group conversations. Even in those they never sat next to each other, and they didn’t address each other directly. Mostly. Renjun couldn’t resist butting in if Jeno said certain comments about certain witches or even humans. He was weird about that.

Weirder still was that sometimes Jeno caught Renjun’s hand lingering on his neck, on the spot where Jeno had bitten him.

As Jeno walked down the hallway, he heard muffled noises. An argument of some sort. Jeno wished he’d brought earphones. He’d come by the side entrance to avoid overhearing the petty squabbles of some of his classmates first thing in the evening. He entertained the possibility that the noise was coming from the other direction, but no such luck. The voices grew clearer as he continued onward.

“…it’s been hard to catch you alone. I wonder if you’ve been doing that on purpose.”

“What do you want?” Renjun?  
“Don’t play dumb. You know what I want.”

Jeno walked faster, seized by a sense of foreboding he couldn’t explain. He turned the corner to see Jae and Renjun standing face to face. The scene was wrong. Jae was smiling for one thing, and the slimy low ranker didn’t smile unless it was at someone else’s expense. Renjun looked furious, but his heart was jack rabbiting in his chest. Jeno could hear it all the way from where he stood.

They both turned when Jeno got there. Jae’s smile was replaced with fear, an expression Jeno was much more used to seeing on his face. He bent forward, whispered something in Renjun’s ear, and backed off. He raised his phone and shook it in the air as he slunk down the hall.

Renjun had gone unusually pale.

Jeno wanted to ask why, before he remembered that Renjun hadn’t tried to talk to him in weeks. He wasn’t about to be the one to break the silence. He gave Renjun a cursory once-over, and walked on as if he’d just been passing by.

* * *

The professors led them down between the trees. As they walked, they heard snarling and gnashing teeth.

They stopped in front of a makeshift pen with walls of barbed wire several heads taller than Renjun. Dog-like animals prowled behind the wire, larger than any dog Renjun had seen before. They had sleek gray fur and milk-white eyes. Their bodies were built like a wolf’s, but they had broader, less pointed snouts. Renjun recalled seeing similar animals on campus, but they hadn’t had white eyes or this feeling of wildness, as if they’d try to tear someone apart if they were let out of the pen. Some of the animals ripped a hunk of meat apart between them, snapping at any other one that came near, and Renjun tried not to imagine his leg in its place. A few came up to the bars when they got closer.

“The unbonded,” Donghyuck whispered.

“The what?”

“The animals that fail to become familiars.”

“This is what they become?” Not all witches had familiars. Binding one was an act of prestige, a sign that a witch’s magic was powerful enough to attract a conduit. Earlier on, Renjun had liked the thinking of having a familiar not for the magical clout but for the idea of a constant companion, though he’d given it up as a pipe dream. Now that he saw what happened to the unchosen animals afterward, he wasn’t sure he wanted it anymore.

For the first time, the professors grouped the students into fours, groups of two sets of partners each. A team activity, they said. Fun.

Chenle and Renjun were selected to work with Donghyuck and Jeno.

Chenle patted Renjun on the back. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “Stuck with our enemies again.”

Renjun had told Chenle some of what happened. Not much, just that he’d had a falling out with Jeno. Even without him saying it, the others sensed that something had happened; they just didn’t know the extent of it, didn’t know that he and Jeno weren’t exactly on speaking terms. In the group they were polite enough to each other. Though they didn’t talk much to one another directly, when they interacted they didn’t have much venom.

Except when, like a few days ago, Jeno had said, “Humans are less evolved than supernaturals.”

It’d probably made sense in the context of the conversation, but Renjun had snapped, “Take that back.”

Jeno had been surprised enough that Renjun could have kicked himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. “It’s a fact. Why are you upset?”

“Because I don’t think _you_ have the right to talk about being evolved.”

Jeno had scowled at him.

“At least we’ll probably do well,” Renjun said.

Chenle grimaced. “Is it worth it though?” Renjun wouldn’t say it to Chenle, but he was relieved to be with Donghyuck, even if he winced at the thought of working with Jeno.

Renjun had thought he’d have it under control by now, but it’d been weeks and he still felt a pulse at the side of his throat when he looked at Jeno. Sometimes he thought it was getting more out of control. Sometimes he wanted it so bad he’d have to halt where he stood, incapable of thinking of anything else for seconds, sometimes minutes.

Renjun and Chenle were both okay with half-assing their class assignments, so Renjun hadn’t had to use much blood. He should have made the same deal with Chenle as he had with Jeno, but he hadn’t been able to make himself go through with it. The thought of another vampire was too much in his current state, even if it was Chenle. Renjun made do with the supplements Jeno had given him when he had to. Swallowing them felt like choking down poison, but they worked. He’d run out eventually, but that was a problem for future Renjun.

“For today’s exercise, each group will chase one of these down and bring it back here. The less harm you need to inflict for the capture, the more points you’ll receive. If you severely injure or kill one, you’ll receive no points along with additional punishment. We’ve just fed them, so they will not be interested in eating you. Most likely,” Jao said.

Jao unlatched the door holding the pen closed. The animals raised their heads, and some pawed at the ground.

They streamed out past the professors and students. The wind raised by their movement whipped at Renjun’s hair. Within seconds they’d gotten some distance away, and individuals split off from the stream. Several at a time branched out and disappeared behind the trees until Renjun could count those remaining on his hands. Finally even those turned and disappeared into the trees. Aside form distant growls and the bent grass left in their wake, it was like they’d vanished.

The professors waited several more minutes before letting the students go. Each group was given a set of four stones that would glow when they were going in the direction of their quarry.

They ran into the trees, following the light of the stones. Seeing Donghyuck and Jeno’s backs as they ran in front of him, a chill fell over Renjun. Two boys running through a dark forest, one with a familiar head of brown hair. Renjun following them, but never fast enough.

Renjun shook his head. The dark was making him paranoid. It was just a dream, and this wasn’t even an accurate duplication of it. Chenle was running beside him, whereas he chased the boys alone in the dream. The boys in the dream wore training squadron uniforms, and it’d be at least a year and possibly years before even Donghyuck was allowed to join.

“Let’s race to see who gets there first,” Donghyuck shouted.

“It’s not a competition,” Chenle said.

“Why? You sacred you’re going to lose?”

“I’m not scared,” Chenle shouted back.

Donghyuck sprinted ahead and Chenle chased him. Renjun made a half-hearted attempt to follow, but he didn’t try very hard. The two of them bounded past trees and over rocks, drawing away step by step.

Renjun should have known this would happen. They’d probably subdue the creature before he got there. It rubbed him the wrong way to be that useless member of a group project, but it wasn’t like he could do much about it. At least he’d get the benefits.

Renjun noticed that Jeno hadn’t sprinted off with them. He was keeping pace with Renjun. Why? Didn’t he want the glory? The excuse of running kept them from needing to talk, but Renjun still felt incredibly awkward. It was like some strange déjà vu of when they’d been partners, except that Renjun had mangled whatever rapport they’d had between them.

“You don’t have to stick with me. It’s okay if you want to go ahead,” Renjun said. The words had to be dragged out of his mouth, because even with the awkwardness he couldn’t be rational and want Jeno to go. Renjun waved his hand in Chenle and Donghyuck’s direction. They’d become small figures in the distance, but if anyone could catch up to them, Jeno could.

“Someone has to make sure you don’t fall too far behind,” Jeno said.

Renjun’s breath caught, overwhelmed for a moment with irrational thankfulness. Jeno was going to stay. It gave him comfort beyond what he knew it should have. Maybe he was already insane.

“Am I that unreliable?” Renjun asked.

Jeno seemed to think seriously about this.

“Wait, no, don’t answer that.”

The other groups split apart from them gradually, following their own stones in different directions between the trees until eventually they ran alone. It was as if only the two of them existed in a dark, endless forest.

It felt like they’d been running forever. Renjun was tiring, but as he ran, he was hit with the realization that he had grown stronger. Before he wouldn’t have been able to cover this distance without stopping or using magic. The realization sent a thrill of exhilaration down his veins. He had grown to enjoy the wind in his face, and the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the next.

“How far away is this?” Renjun asked some time later. Sweat ran down his brow, but he didn’t use his magic. After what he and Jeno used to do, he didn’t want to risk it.

“I’m going to take a break,” Renjun said, slowing to a stop. “You can go ahead.”

Jeno stopped beside him with a huff. Stubborn, as always.

Renjun put his hands on his knees and bent forward, breathing in and out. “It’ll be short,” he wanted to say, but he couldn’t guarantee that, so he decided not to. He’d almost gotten his breathing to slow down when they heard a cracking sound. It sounded like the snapping of a tree branch.

A dark shape lunched out from between the trees and barreled into Jeno.

At first Renjun thought it was one of the dog creatures, gone wild despite Jao’s assurances that they had been fed well, but he saw no teeth trying to tear at Jeno, heard no snarling. Dark shadows billowed out behind the shape’s back.

Jeno was thrown backward. He flipped in the air and landed on his feet, skidding into a clearing between the trees. The shape followed him, a mass of black shadow, moving almost as fast as Jeno had. Moving as fast as a vampire?

Renjun ran toward him. An arm emerged out of the shadow, and the blackness melded and condensed around it, coalescing into the form of a man. Renjun couldn’t distinguish if the inky blackness was all part of the man’s clothing or part of the man himself. Though the blackness around the man’s feet formed into what looked like boots and that on his legs and torso had the texture of silky clothing, more blackness shifted across his skin, making it hard to see where the clothing ended and skin began. It rose off his back in threads like steam, and covered hands that ended in claws. Only his face didn’t have a strand of blackness curling upon it. It, and where his skin showed through the shadows, made a stark contrast against the black.

Jeno aimed a kick at the man. It caught him in the side. The man was knocked sideways, but he gave no indication of pain. He lighted lightly. Where Jeno’s leg had hit him, a thread of the blackness detached and clung to Jeno, curling up around his leg. The blackness seemed to weigh down Jeno’s leg, pulling it back to the ground too fast. His leg jarred against the ground. Renjun saw Jeno’s shock, and Jeno tipping off balance.

The man raised a hand and blackness shot out from his palm toward Jeno. Renjun didn’t know what that blackness was, but some instinct filled him with dread. He couldn’t let it touch Jeno.

Renjun slashed into his magic and threw it at the man. He didn’t have time to form it into fire, or light, or any other offensive weapon, so it came out as a bolt of pure magic. Black lines of darkness streaking around blinding light.

It slammed into the man’s chest, and the blackness that had been moving toward Jeno dissipated. Relief made Renjun go weak. The man cried with fury, an inhuman sound.

The relief didn’t last long because the man turned around and released blackness in Renjun’s direction. It moved too fast for him to dodge, and knocked him backward.

He hit something hard. A tree? Black spots played across his vision. Then the wave of blackness engulfed him, filling his mouth and nose, and covering his eyes. After that, the sounds around him cut off. He heard nothing. He saw blackness.

He saw himself, a distant figure in the blackness. He knew it wasn’t real. But in his mind he saw himself alone in blackness, groping for an exit. Maybe it was a projection his mind had created to comfort himself, because if he saw nothing but blackness he’d be terrified.

A single directive played over in his head, words that held no meaning to him—tear off the veil.

Then he saw it. There, a seam in the blackness, an edge he hadn’t known he was looking for until he saw it. He tore at it, without knowing what he was really doing, or how. The blackness came apart under his hands—or was it under his mind?—thin papery layers ripping away several at a time. Slowly the clearing came back into view.

The back of his head and hand stung. He’d bumped them against whatever he’d hit.

When his vision cleared, he saw Jeno dangling in the air. Blackness encircled his wrists, holding him up.

The man raised a clawed hand and slashed Jeno across the chest.

Someone screamed. It might have been Jeno. It might have been Renjun. Jeno’s eyes opened up to the sky and fluttered closed. His head fell to his chest.

No.

Renjun tried to get up, but his legs wouldn’t hold his weight.

The blackness unwrapped itself from Jeno’s wrists. The man made a gesture with his hand and Jeno was flung over to the side. He fell somewhere past the edge of the clearing with a dull, distant thump.

The man turned back to Renjun, and jumped toward him.

Renjun raised an arm. He knew it was a useless gesture. He slashed into his magic, reaching for more of it than he ever had before, but he couldn’t find his focus. The thump of Jeno hitting the dirt kept resounding in his ears. The man landed in front of him, and his focus shattered.

The man didn’t appear much older than Jeno or Renjun. He was more boy than man. His face was narrow and sharp, unexpectedly delicate for all his ferocity. He raised his clawed hand.

His eyes were orange-yellow cat’s eyes.

Renjun wanted to close his eyes, but he refused to. He knew this was it.

The clawed hand stopped in midair, a knife poised to strike. The boy blinked slowly. The hand came down.

Renjun wondered if Donghyuck and Chenle had corralled the dog creature. He thought of that Netflix series he never got around to finishing. Now he wished he’d looked up the ending. He thought of Jeno falling out of sight.

The hand grasped Renjun under the chin. The man tilted Renjun’s head up. Renjun could feel the point of each claw against the soft underside of his chin, though somehow none of them pierced his flesh.

The boy stared at Renjun’s face.

“Who are you?” he said, in a voice more human than Renjun could have imagined. Somehow that terrified Renjun more than the claws at his throat. The boy rubbed his thumb against the side of Renjun’s chin. The end of the claw came close to his eye. “Your name.”

Words pushed their way out of Renjun’s mouth against his will. “Renjun Huang.”

The boy let go of Renjun and hopped backward, landing on one foot.

“We’ll meet again,” he said. Renjun reached for his magic. The boy seemed to notice because his lips curved into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, a smile like a parent indulging a child some silly joke.

The boy hopped backward again, crossing the clearing in a single leap, turned, and disappeared into the trees.

Renjun pushed himself up against the tree at his back. He staggered out into the clearing, through it, and over to the other side where he’d seen Jeno fall. He got to the edge of a drop-off, and looked down.

His hands began to shake. He’d seen this before.

Jeno, lying twisted on his side. A gash across his chest.

It wasn’t really a ravine. It was a ditch, several meters deep. Renjun angled himself over the edge and slid down.

He knelt down beside Jeno. Jeno wasn’t moving.

Renjun put a finger on Jeno’s neck before he realized it was stupid. There wasn’t a pulse to feel for.

“Wake up,” he said.

The gash across Jeno’s chest continued to bleed. Didn’t vampires have superhuman healing? Why wasn’t it healing?

Renjun had to stop the bleeding first. He started to unravel the bandages on his arms. One of them was already half saturated with his own blood. It wouldn’t be sanitary. Maybe it wouldn’t matter to Jeno.

The smell of Renjun’s blood intermingled with Jeno’s in the air.

One of Jeno’s eyelids fluttered.

“Jeno,” Renjun said. At the sound of his voice, Jeno’s eyelids fluttered again. “Wake up.” A long moment passed, and Jeno opened his eyes.

Renjun almost teared up in relief.

Jeno coughed. His wound still bled, though slower now that he was awake. “Need,” Jeno croaked.

“What do you need?”

“Blood,” Jeno said.

His eyes began to close again.

“Stay awake, damn it,” Renjun said. “You want blood? There’s blood right here.”

Jeno’s eyes fluttered open again and locked on Renjun’s, uncomprehending. He was confused, maybe half from blood loss.

Renjun pulled Jeno up, and pressed Jeno’s mouth against his neck, against the same spot Jeno had bitten weeks before.

Renjun’s neck throbbed.

Jeno made a noise of protest. Hunger and pain clouded Jeno’s vision, but he held onto a thread of control. Renjun didn’t know why now of all times he was resisting.

“Bite me,” Renjun said.

That was all it took. The fragile thread of control snapped.

Jeno sank his teeth into Renjun’s neck.

Renjun wished he could say he’d only done it because he had to. But all he could think was finally. Finally.

It made no difference. His mind went blank as hot, sweet pleasure coursed through him, singing fire into his blood and starbursting against the back of his eyes.

After tasting blood, Jeno latched onto his neck. He sucked softly at first. His hand, which had been limp on the ground, grabbed onto Renjun’s wrist. His feeding became insistent, greedy. When Jeno opened his eyes, they were a dark dark amber, darker than Renjun had ever seen them before. Renjun knew he should have found that dangerous. Jeno’s hand tightened around Renjun’s wrist so much it hurt, and he tried to pull it out of Jeno’s grasp.

With a snarl, Jeno flipped them over and pushed Renjun back against the ground. He sank his teeth into the other side of Renjun’s neck and fed.

Jeno fed in a frenzy. Renjun saw the last shreds of humanity fade. Jeno’s control was gone.

He wasn’t going to stop, Renjun thought.

Renjun would be okay with that.

Renjun started to feel light-headed, and Jeno continued to feed.

Renjun wanted to stare up at the night sky. He’d like to see the stars. But when he looked up he saw Jeno, and then he didn’t want to see anything else. It really wasn’t fair. Even while giving blood he was in thrall.

The edges of Renjun’s vision started to grow hazy. He put a hand on the top of Jeno’s head, wanting to feel his hair. The strands between his fingers were as soft as they looked.

His hand fell from Jeno’s hair. He was getting sleepy.

Jeno jerked away from Renjun’s neck. Something of Jeno was back, though it felt incongruous, a covering of sanity plastered over what lurked beneath it, over what was still visible through the cracks. For a moment, Renjun felt guilty that he hadn’t satisfied Jeno’s hunger. Then he felt angry for that human response of guilt. Then just tired.

“I could have killed you,” Jeno said.

Renjun wanted to sleep. He closed his eyes.

“No, you told me to stay awake. Now you need to stay awake.”

Reluctantly, Renjun opened his eyes again.

“You’re an idiot. I could have killed you.”

“You didn’t,” Renjun said.

The gash in Jeno’s chest had begun to close up, Renjun noted with satisfaction.

“Why would you do this?” Jeno was like an annoying fly buzzing around his head, not letting him rest.

“I didn’t want you to die,” Renjun said, and maybe because he was exhausted, “And I wanted you to bite me.”

“You did?” Jeno asked, incredulous.

“I’ve wanted it for a long time.”

“I thought you hated it,” Jeno said.

It was hard not to answer Jeno when he’d just been bitten. He knew it was irrational, a side effect of the bite, but he wanted to trust Jeno. “I hated that I wanted it,” Renjun said.

Jeno put an arm under Renjun’s shoulder and began to lift him up from the ground. With fresh blood in him, he’d recovered some strength. “What’s wrong with wanting it? A lot of witches want me to bite them.”

Renjun wanted to glare at Jeno but decided it was too much effort to be worth it. He settled for calling him an arrogant bastard in his head.

“It’s wrong because I’m half human,” Renjun retorted, the words slipping out before he had the sense to stop them.

Jeno froze. Renjun’s heart plummeted as the magnitude of what he’d said caught up to him. Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gotta say at this point everyone's theories are way more advanced than the actual ideas in my head haha
> 
> also was not expecting this chapter to get as long as it did, if you made it thru, congrats  
> somehow everything always gets longer than i predict
> 
> tysm as always for reading even after this has become kinda crazy long  
> and for all your kudos and comments, they make me v happy


	21. red and silver

“Just kidding?” Renjun tried. He winced when Jeno stared him down. Something flitted through in Jeno’s gaze in a heartbeat, a step too close to revulsion, there and gone. Renjun looked away.

The rest of the night passed Renjun in fragments. Leaning against Jeno because he had no choice. Jeno's hand stiff on his shoulder. Barely holding him at all, yet all that was keeping him from stumbling down among the leaves and rocks.

Tension he couldn’t find the words to dispel. Silence.

Broken once. “I should have known,” Jeno said.

“What?”

“You’ve been lying about what you are this whole time.”

Renjun stumbled. Jeno’s hand on his shoulder kept him upright, barely. The touch of Jeno’s hand was light, but those fingers felt like a vise trapping him in place, blocking off all possible routes of escape.

“If I had known, I wouldn’t have—” Jeno’s voice cut off. He sounded angry, furious even. Betrayed, maybe.

“You wouldn’t have what?” Renjun’s own voice, distant and uneven. Soft. “You wouldn’t have talked to me?”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have,” Jeno said.

That stung. Part of the hurt had to come from the bite. He knew that for a while he’d be wired to want Jeno to like him. He hadn’t known that would mean Jeno saying, “I don’t want to talk to you” would hurt more than slamming into a tree, but with his luck it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Other thoughts, like maybe that he had started to like Jeno, like maybe they could’ve been friends before he’d screwed everything up by letting Jeno bite him, those were irrelevant. Those paths had closed in the past.

“Why do I have to tell you?” Renjun said in that same soft voice. Odd that he sounded distant instead of hurt, but that was better.

“It’s dishonest,” Jeno said.

Renjun’s fingers dug into his palms. Dishonest, huh? “So I should go around telling everyone? So they don’t have to waste time figuring out they don’t like me, right? Like you.”

“I don’t dislike you,” Jeno said, but Renjun had seen his initial reaction, that moment of revulsion so fast it could have been played off as a trick of the light if it wasn’t night. “I just—I don’t know what to think. I don’t know who you are.”

Renjun didn’t respond.

“Who else knows?” Jeno asked.

So soon after the bite, the compulsion to answer Jeno’s questions came on strong, and Renjun didn’t care enough to resist. It wasn’t like he could reveal anything more shocking.

“Donghyuck, Chenle, the professors.”

“Donghyuck and Chenle know?” Jeno definitely sounded betrayed now. Maybe because they knew and were still friends with Renjun. Maybe Jeno thought he shouldn’t have friends at all. Or maybe Jeno thought everyone deserved to know, not just Donghyuck and Chenle.

Sudden panic struck as Renjun realized Jeno could make that a reality. If Jeno told people he was half-human, they would believe him.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “Please.”

Jeno just stared straight ahead, expression unreadable.

“Please, Jeno. It’s the one thing I’m asking of you.” Tried to hide the panic clawing its way up his throat. Clinging onto Jeno with grubby half-human fingers wouldn’t be a good look, and would probably be the opposite of convincing. “For giving you blood when you needed it, if nothing else,” Renjun said. “You owe me something for that, right?”

Jeno looked at him for the first time since he’d dropped the bomb. There was a flicker of guilt when he saw Renjun’s neck. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it was torn up on both sides.

For a bizarre moment, Renjun thought Jeno was going to try to lick it better. For a horrible moment, he wanted Jeno to.

“I don’t owe anything to a human,” Jeno said.

Renjun couldn’t speak.

He didn’t find his voice even when Donghyuck and Chenle caught up with them on the way back, Chenle hauling the sleeping dog creature over his back.

“Where the hell were you guys? I can’t believe you just ditched us—” Donghyuck stopped when he saw their torn clothing, and Renjun’s injuries. Even Jeno, flush with blood and his stupid vampire healing abilities, wasn’t in great shape. The gash across his chest had closed up to a white line, but he was paler than usual and there was a slight trembling in his legs.

Donghyuck didn’t ask what happened, not then. He did his best to patch up Renjun’s injuries, while Chenle ran ahead to fetch the professors.

At some point, Renjun moved from leaning on Jeno to leaning on Donghyuck.

The professors found them like this. They came running, and some of Professor Kim’s hair fell loose from the tight bun she kept it in. Renjun and Jeno told the professors what had happened. When they spoke of the cat-eyed boy, a grim look passed between the professors.

“A demon,” Jao said.

“Jao,” Professor Kim said sharply.

“They need to know what they saw,” Jao said. Professor Kim pursed her lips but didn’t protest. “Is this enough for the witches to treat this like a real threat?”

Professor Kim’s lips thinned to a line. “You know I have no say in that decision.”

Jeno did most of the talking. When they finished, the professors shared another look.

“The demon attacked, but left you alive,” Jao said. “That’s unusual.”

“Demons are fickle creatures. These students need to be taken to the med ward, not questioned while they can barely stay standing,” Professor Kim said, effectively ending the conversation.

On the way there, Renjun could feel the phantom of Jeno’s hand on his shoulders. Jeno wasn’t far ahead of him, but he felt far, far away.

* * *

Renjun kept waiting for the rumors to start, for him to walk into class one day and see just from their faces that they  _ knew. _ He waited. But if Jeno was going to spread it around, apparently he’d decided to wait too. No one even looked at him weird.

Everyone’s eyes seemed to be on the training squadrons. Training squadron patrols around the academy had doubled. No official announcement was made, which only fueled the rumors. Any injury seen on a training squadron member was questioned.

“Maybe they’re hunting demons,” someone would whisper.

“Hunting demons? As if. I have a sister on the training squadrons, I would know.”

“It’s not like demons can appear wherever they want. They have to be summoned,” someone else would argue. “And if they’re summoned, they have to obey the summoner.”

“Summoner? Are you saying a witch is doing this? How dare you?”

Someone else would say, “I don’t think all demons have to be summoned. The ones in the war were on their own side, right?”

“Yeah, but it has to be because they killed their summoners.”

“There’s no way those demons were summoned, they’re different…”

Some witches and vampires got into a big fight on campus when one of the rumors implied that the training squadrons were protecting the students from rogue vampires in the woods, not demonic activity.

As far as Renjun knew, only he, Donghyuck, Chenle, Jeno, and Jaemin knew the truth. Jisung too, probably, since Jeno and Jaemin told him everything.

“If they didn’t tell him, he would’ve found out anyway. He’s annoying like that,” Chenle said, and he wasn’t really joking.

In the midst of this, Renjun told Donghyuck about Jae. He avoided the part where Jae tasted his blood. He didn’t want to lose his appetite before dinner.

“He’s blackmailing you? I’ll kill the fucker,” Donghyuck said, grabbing his jacket and striding toward the door like he was about to go do just that.

“You can’t,” Renjun said. “I mean, it’d be awesome, but after you kill him, he’s still going to send out the pics.”

“So you’re just going to do nothing?”

“I’m going to avoid him until I figure out how to get rid of his phone. Can’t you make his phone explode or something?”

Donghyuck rubbed his hands together, eyes lighting up at the thought of a challenge. “I could probably arrange it.”

“No, that doesn’t work either.” Renjun sighed. “He probably has back-ups somewhere.”

“So the best idea is for me to beat him up until he agrees to delete everything.”

“I wish. It’s too risky. I don’t like asking this, but can you help me keep an eye on him until I figure something out?”

Donghyuck didn’t look pleased, but he nodded. “You didn’t have to ask. I would’ve done that anyway.”

Renjun got up to get a glass of water from the kitchen. Donghyuck’s voice floated over from the other room.

“So after you get rid of the pics, can I kill him?”

“Nope,” Renjun said.

“Why?” Donghyuck whined. “Have you become a saint or something? This is not a forgive thy enemy situation.”

“No, because I’m going to kill him myself.”

In the midst of this, Jeno stopped seeing the witch in mixed class. Renjun wasn’t trying to notice, but it was hard not to when they came to class without one another and Donghyuck whispered in his ear, “Whoa, what happened there?”

Jeno didn’t look at the witch once, though the witch wore a shirt that exposed the marks of the last bite on his neck.

Renjun should’ve felt sorry for the witch, maybe. Or for Jeno, who was pointedly ignoring the murmurs of their classmates around him. He didn’t.

Served them right.

* * *

Renjun was a liar. Half-human. He’d fooled Jeno into thinking he was a witch, and he’d been so good at it that even now Jeno kept trying to overlay the images of human and witch and Renjun in his head and he couldn’t make it fit.

Jeno groaned and rolled over.

When Renjun had stepped away from him that night, he smelled wounded. Hurt, as if Jeno had drawn more than blood.

Half-human. That explained the taste.

Each time Jeno saw Renjun in class, he smelled that same wounded smell, fainter and overlaid with other smells, the flowery soap smell of Renjun’s shampoo, the slight tang of his sweat, but always always there.

Jeno’s parents would kill him if they knew he was hanging out with a half-human. It was almost as bad as hanging around with a human. Some vampires did, but not a Lee. Prey was prey.

But Jeno couldn’t put Renjun in that box, couldn’t make him fit the label of prey, just like he couldn’t make him fit the other images running through Jeno’s head.

Jeno saw Renjun asleep on his bed, hair fanned out against his forehead, murmuring to himself. Strangely fragile in sleep.

Jeno saw Renjun kneeling above him, face blurry in his vision, a voice telling him to wake up. He’d given his blood, and even if he hadn’t known how dangerous an injured vampire was, he must have known it was dangerous. It wasn’t something most would’ve done.

Renjun had saved him.

But Renjun had also lied to him. Withheld the truth. Same thing.

_But_ _why_ , said a little voice in his head that wouldn’t shut up, _why does that bother you so much?_

* * *

“What’s up with you and Jeno?” Donghyuck asked.

Renjun scowled. He was trying not to think about Jeno, which was hard enough with the lingering sensation of teeth on both sides of his neck, and as usual his best friend was out to ruin his plans. It was bad enough that he’d had to wear turtlenecks until yesterday. The weather had been just cold enough to justify them, but was edging into a warm spring.

“Nothing’s up,” Renjun said. He was being honest. Nothing was the best description for it. Radio silence.

“Right, and that’s why you’ve stopped talking.”

“We haven’t stopped talking.”

“Saying hi doesn’t count.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Stop avoiding the issue, Renjun. I see you looking at him when you think he’s not looking. And when you’re not looking, he looks at you the same way. Half like he wants to talk, half like he’s hoping you notice him, and a little like he wants to eat you.”

“I don’t look at him! And  _ I  _ don’t want to eat  _ him. _ That doesn’t even make sense.” And Jeno couldn’t be looking at him either—he would have noticed.

“Huh, really. Could’ve fooled me.”

Renjun sighed. “I can’t deal with him right after he gnawed on my neck. It’s weird.”

Donghyuck sat back, mildly appeased, then leaned forward again. His eyes narrowed. “That’s not all, is it?”

The doorbell rang. “Perfect timing,” Donghyuck said, leaping up from his chair to go get the door. Renjun agreed. Perfect timing to cut off what was going to be a very awkward conversation.

Renjun relaxed until Jeno walked into their apartment. He stopped at the entrance to the living room when he saw Renjun.

Donghyuck smiled at Renjun from behind Jeno with too many teeth. That traitor.

“You here for the project? I’ll get out of your way,” Renjun said, too fast. He snatched up his things and headed for his room.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Donghyuck hook an arm around Jeno’s. Renjun reached his door. He shifted his notebooks to one arm, and reached for the doorknob with the other, cursing past Renjun for closing the door in the first place. He’d be safe from Donghyuck’s schemes once he was inside.

A hand placed itself on top of his. Donghyuck turned the doorknob for him, threw open Renjun’s door, and shoved Jeno and Renjun inside. Jeno stared at Donghyuck in bewilderment, but Renjun wasn’t confused. Renjun was going to kill him.

“Don’t come out until you’ve figured out your problems,” Donghyuck said, and shut the door on them.

“Donghyuck Lee,” Renjun shouted at the door.

“Love ya,” Donghyuck said.

“The door doesn’t lock from outside,” Renjun said. Donghyuck was going to lose his best friend card. Then, he was going to die. A slow, embarrassing death at Renjun’s hands.

“Don’t force me to make it lock from outside, because you know I’ll figure out how to do it.” Donghyuck said.

Renjun turned to Jeno, who stood there with his shoulders hunched and his eyes trained on the door.

“So, let’s talk,” Renjun heard himself say. He didn’t want to. But maybe this was the best time, when Jeno’s derision could still cut him raw. He’d cut the ties. Rip out that last tether holding them together, let it bleed instead of scabbing over, and set himself out loose to sea. Renjun pulled over his chair, and had Jeno sit in it. Renjun sat on his bed, and faced Jeno.

“I’m half-human. I know you don’t like it, but for the sake of our friends, we should try to get along.”

“We should,” Jeno said slowly.

“But we don’t have to make this harder than it has to be,” Renjun said quickly. “I don’t have to be around much, and we don’t have to talk outside of the group. We can stay out of each other’s way.”

Jeno’s eyes slid up to his. “I don’t want that,” Jeno said.

Renjun fought down a spike of irritation. He was trying to make this work. “So what do you want?” Then he knew. “Okay, so you don’t want me around at all.”

Jeno’s head jerked up. “That’s not what I meant. I just—it’s all so confusing and wrong. I’m not supposed to feel this way about a human.”

Renjun flinched, despite himself, and his own reaction, and how Jeno looked at him, like Renjun was confusing, like Renjun was fragile, doubled his irritation. “I’m half human, or did you hear wrong?” Not a human, not a witch. From the confusion on Jeno’s face, he didn’t get it. Right. To a vampire the difference between half and full human would be mere semantics—the human part contaminating and erasing the rest, and it didn’t matter that Renjun felt the undeniable reality of his two halves, felt it with a certainty like breathing, felt it like he could touch the jagged cracks running through the middle. “So if I were a full witch, it’d be okay to feel ‘this way’? What’s ‘this way’ anyway?”

“It would be better.” Renjun had expected that when he’d asked, but hearing the words come out of Jeno’s mouth knocked the breath from his lungs. Jeno didn’t notice his breath stop, one small blessing, and continued, “I’m not supposed to feel this way about a hu—half-human. But you saved my life and you feel so hurt…”

Renjun stilled. “I’m not hurt,” he said. He winced when he remembered it was useless to lie.

“I feel guilty, okay?” Jeno bit out.

“How unfortunate for you,” Renjun said.

Jeno looked so conflicted and bewildered and lost that Renjun might’ve felt sorry for him if it had been a different day. Maybe he could in the future when the distance widened between them and he looked back on this conversation. For now he couldn’t pretend he didn’t care what Jeno thought of him. It was a bad joke. He cared, when Jeno thought it was beneath him to feel guilty.

“What did I say wrong?” Jeno asked. “You feel…” Jeno reached for him, but Renjun jerked back from his hand. Jeno’s eyes widened and his hand fell.

“Does it matter what a human feels?” Renjun said.

“That isn’t what I—”

“Was going to say? You don’t have to say it.”

Jeno hunched over in his chair. “It’s a lot to take in.”

“Which is why I didn’t want you to know in the first place,” Renjun burst out. “You act like I’m doing something wrong by hiding it. You act like you deserve to know. But why would I tell you when I know what you people think about humans? I don’t want to be thought of that way, not by you, not by anyone.”

“Renjun.” Jeno stood up, and took a step toward him.

Renjun scooted backward on his bed. The corners of his eyes started to sting, and that made him furious. He scooted back until his back jarred against the wall.

“I didn’t even know I had magic until four years ago. And I know I suck at magic, and it’s probably because I’m part human—” And damn, his eyes were really stinging now. He covered them with his hands. “—but I don’t need you to tell me that.”

“Renjun, I’m.” Renjun heard Jeno swallow. Jeno probably didn’t want to hear this. How awkward for him, having to deal with the half-human inconvenience in his life for the sake of his friends, who couldn’t keep it together long enough to have a real conversation. Renjun wanted Jeno to leave before he kept blabbering and made this worse. “Humans are... You’re different. You’re not really a human.”

“I am human,” Renjun said furiously. “I’ve lived more of my life as a human than a witch.”

He wanted to be angry at Jeno, wanted a fury that would burn and consume, but he had only the stinging in the corner of his eyes and the lump in his throat that he refused to swallow. He’d choke on it first.

“Whatever you think of humans is what you should think of me,” Renjun said, quieter now. “I am what I am.”

He chanced a glance at Jeno through his fingers. A mistake. The vampire was standing frozen, paler than usual, a stricken expression on his face. It’d be better if he was indifferent or irritated, if he didn’t look like he cared. As if set back into motion by Renjun’s glance, Jeno opened his mouth, and Renjun didn’t want him to talk, because if he also sounded like he  _ cared _ —

Renjun said, “It’s fine. I get it. I’ve taken enough years of Human Studies—”

He spoke around the lump in his throat. He was choking on it now, his words breaking up.

“I know it’s what you grew up with—It’s not all wrong, and it doesn’t matter if I hate it—I know it won’t change. I’m just so tired of being told I’m not good enough—”

The bed shifted, creaking under a new weight.

“It’s not like they have to tell me. I know. I don’t belong here—”

“Renjun.” Jeno’s hands caught his arms. Renjun resisted weakly. Jeno shouldn’t see him like this. “Renjun.” Jeno pried his hands from his eyes.

“You’re crying,” Jeno said, stunned.

“I’m not crying,” Renjun snarled.

Jeno searched his face. Renjun didn’t know what he was looking for, or what he found. Renjun met Jeno’s eyes and let him look, wearing defiance like a cloak. But look too close and it was a thin paper shroud, and he was afraid Jeno saw right through it.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” Jeno said.

Renjun could tell the words cost him. That stung, too.

“It’s okay,” Renjun said. Hollowness in his chest. “I don’t expect you to think differently from everyone else. Just, it’s easier if you don’t act like you care.”

“I do care,” Jeno said.

Renjun stared at him. A horrible familiar emotion uncurled in his chest.

“Don’t say that.”

“You saved me. Of course I care.”

“Don’t force yourself just because you feel like you owe me.”

“I’m not forcing myself.” Jeno was so dangerous like this, his eyes wide and earnest. Sitting too close. “Can’t we start over? I want to try to be friends.”

Renjun shrank back. “I’m sorry, but I can’t—I can’t be friends with you if you can’t accept what I am.”

“Give me a chance to try. Unless you hate me now?”

“I don’t hate you,” Renjun whispered.

Jeno smiled. It crumbled the last of whatever resistance Renjun had.

Jeno put his arms around Renjun, pressing him back into the wall. It was weird and awkward, like the rest of the conversation had been. Renjun was overly conscious of Jeno’s hair feathering against his skin, Jeno’s head in the crook of his neck, and his arms around Renjun’s torso. That hateful familiar hope burning in his chest. Slowly, carefully, he hugged Jeno back.

* * *

Jao pit Jae and Donghyuck in a match against each other for class. It’d been a while since the last one. Renjun hissed a warning at Donghyuck, but if the glint in his eye was anything to go by, he didn’t care.

Donghyuck really didn’t care. Donghyuck sent Jae flying with a blast of concentrated wind. Jae tumbled through the air and slammed into the side of the auditorium wall with enough force to make their chairs rattle. The wind held him there until Professor Kim called an end to the match and shouted at Donghyuck that he’d get docked for excessive use of force. Donghyuck let Jae go to tumble toward the ground, but not before releasing a thread of flame that raced up and into Jae’s hair, catching a section of it on fire.

“Donghyuck, I called an end to it!” Professor Kim shouted. She extinguished the flame with a gesture, but it’d already burned off a patch of Jae’s hair.

“Sorry, didn’t hear you,” Donghyuck said with an entirely unapologetic grin.

Professor Kim looked down her nose at him. “Then you can stay after class and do some self-reflection with me. Maybe that will aid your hearing.”

“But professor.”

“Don’t argue with me, Donghyuck.”

Jae peeled himself off the ground. Renjun watched him limp back to his seat. He might’ve liked the sight a bit too much.

Chenle elbowed him. “Stop chuckling under your breath. I know you don’t like him, but that’s weird and creepy.”

After class Renjun was feeling pretty good, even though he had to leave Donghyuck behind with Professor Kim. Donghyuck was going to get his best friend card back, and then some.

Renjun had almost made it out of the building when an arm shot out and grabbed him. He was jerked down the hall into an empty classroom and slammed against the wall so hard he struggled to find his breath.

Jae shoved him against the wall again, looking half-deranged with wild eyes and the tuft of missing hair. Renjun had never seen a vampire so off-kilter.

“This is your fault,” Jae screamed, spittle flying in Renjun’s face. “I know Donghyuck’s your friend. You put him up to this.”

“I didn’t ask him to do anything.”

But Jae wasn’t listening.

Pain racketed up his side. Renjun wasn’t sure how he wound up on the ground. Jae had punched him? Or kicked him? It’d been too fast to see.

Renjun groaned. He tried to push himself up, but Jae shoved him back to the ground with a knee between his shoulder blades.

Fresh pain ran up Renjun’s side as he was pushed against the ground by the weight on his back. Something cool touched the back of Renjun’s neck. The coolness—fingers—ran down the back of his neck and stopped above his shoulders. Renjun went cold.

Renjun stared at a square of brown between two squares of white on the floor. The weight shifted, pressing down harder. Renjun couldn’t stop a hiss from escaping between his lips. Maybe Jae laughed at that, but it was halfway drowned out by the pounding that started in Renjun’s chest.

Jae’s next words were a breath against his ear. “I wonder who bit you. Both sides of your neck too.”

Then, Renjun knew. The pounding became a wild drumbeat.

It was okay. It was nothing, normal. Witches gave blood all the time. He’d given blood not long ago, and if that had been due to necessity, if he hadn’t had the enthusiasm of other witches, that was a technicality. His finger drew a line of dust against the ground.

Jae’s tongue touched the back of Renjun’s neck.

It wasn’t okay. Renjun struggled against him, jerking his body from side to side. Jae just laughed. He pinned Renjun down, hands pulling Renjun’s arms behind him, and Renjun couldn’t move.

Renjun reached for his magic. That was all he had left. It might not be enough, but he couldn’t think about that—he had to focus—

He couldn’t think—

Focus.

The scent of his blood hit the air. His magic came. It blazed through his veins, almost like it’d heard his desperation, almost like it was pleased by his call, sapping up the offering of his blood.

It exploded into the air around them, spreading around the both of them in a thick miasma. His magic slashed through Jae’s aura down to his inner essence, his core.

Jae stilled as tendrils of Renjun’s magic spidered around his core. Renjun tasted something new in the air. Fear.

Not his. He wasn’t afraid anymore.

Jae whimpered, and the sound had a musical quality. Renjun liked the sound. He tightened his magic, and Jae whimpered again.

It wasn’t as satisfying the second time around.

Renjun turned himself over. Jae still knelt on top of him, but his arms had fallen to his sides. His eyes were blown wide, staring past Renjun and full of terror.

“Pretty,” Renjun heard himself saying. “Look at me.”

Jae’s eyes snapped to him as if pulled by a puppeteer’s string. The taste of fear was delicious in Renjun’s mouth. The tendrils of Renjun’s magic melted into each other where they touched until they surrounded Jae’s core completely, a glowing sphere with threads of black pulsing (waiting, anticipating, a part of him supplied).

Renjun wanted to hurt him (eat him alive).

Later, Renjun wished he could have said he hesitated (Why?).

He knew what to do somehow. It was like he’d always known. He twisted something formless in his mind, something loosened, and his magic was unleashed. It devoured.

Renjun looked into Jae’s eyes until the whimpering stopped and the terror faded. He looked into his eyes after that still, until there was nothing left.

It frightened him how satisfied he felt, but only a little.

His head buzzed, as if he was drunk, and his skin tingled like it’d been touched by electricity. He heard someone say his name distantly. A voice he liked much better.

He turned.

Jeno stood in the doorway. His aura played around him, a dusty red with motes of silver. Renjun stared. He’d never seen color in an aura before. It was beautiful, and in that moment, so was Jeno, with the red and silver dancing around him.

“Get off me,” Renjun said to Jae. He felt no interest toward Jae anymore, who had no aura at all, who had no beauty.

“Yes,” Jae said, standing up without looking at anything. His arms dangled limp at his sides. Renjun barely noticed him.

He went over to Jeno. Jeno took an involuntary step back from him, and Renjun was confused, but he didn’t like it. Jeno was looking at Renjun like he’d never seen him before.

“Jeno,” he said, suddenly afraid. He caught Jeno’s arm. “Don’t leave.”

At the sound of Renjun’s voice, the scary lack of recognition faded. Renjun felt a lot better, though Jeno continued to look at him weird. “You’re still you,” Jeno said in a strangled voice.

“And you’re you. Way to state the obvious,” Renjun said.

Renjun didn’t know why Jeno was so tense. He felt safe and warm and full and satisfied.

He yawned. And sleepy. Very sleepy.

He circled his arms around Jeno’s neck. Jeno startled. “What are you—?”

Renjun nuzzled against Jeno’s shoulder, finding a good spot to rest his head.

Jeno was really looking at him weird now. With concern, and oddly, fear? Renjun wanted to tell Jeno there was nothing to be afraid of anymore, but he didn’t get the words out. 

Renjun yawned again, and fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry i'm late this week
> 
> there's no reason except that this chapter was really really hard to write, which is ironic cuz it's also one of the shortest chps  
> i dunno why but it was a real struggle, i cry  
> hope it came out as an enjoyable read anyway
> 
> also i removed the chenji tag because i realized i only offer crumbs so it's a little unfair to keep it there...


	22. to the races

Renjun woke to a light shake of his shoulder. He was irritated that someone would try to wake him when he could tell it was still dark outside. He thought Donghyuck knew better after all these years. In the time it took to realize that yes, Donghyuck did know better but would do it anyway, he realized he wasn't in his bed. It took him another moment to place himself in his surroundings, to feel it, the hand on his shoulder, himself pressed against something solid, steady, cool. His own arms against skin—skin?

His eyes snapped open. He was definitely not in bed, and he wasn't even at home. He was leaning against Jeno—Jeno?—in a mostly empty classroom. With this came another spark of genius. Jeno had been the one who woke him up. Jeno peered at him.

Renjun soon became far too aware of Jeno’s arm holding him up, and, impossibly, his own arms around Jeno’s neck. He sprang back.

"Sorry," Renjun said.

"You're back," Jeno said. Jeno's relief was palpable. There was a strange note in his voice, and Renjun might have noticed if he wasn’t preoccupied with trying to put space between himself and Jeno.

Renjun was surprised he didn't stumble in his haste. He'd expected some after sleep stiffness, but his steps came fluidly, his feet light but steady on the ground. His body had never felt so light. Strange.

His skin tingled. More than his skin actually. His magic tingled, humming in his veins. The tingling and the lingering sluggishness, kind of like how he’d feel after too much food, made him want to sleep.

He could sleep again, leaning against Jeno's chest—nope, he was not going there.

An image came rushing back to Renjun, one clip of a record reel. It was like watching a replay of his life from the outside. He saw himself throwing his arms around Jeno, and nuzzling into his shoulder. Gah, nuzzling? What was that? Renjun wished he could say he remembered wrong, but he remembered that part all too clearly. And then, incredibly, stupidly, falling asleep. 

No wonder Jeno had been looking at him weird. No wonder he looked relieved now.

Maybe Renjun could write it off as caving to his human side, but he didn’t think that was what it was. Plus he hated the idea of even voicing that aloud. Talk about desperate.

"Sorry," Renjun said again. "I really don't know why I did that."

That was a lie, and Jeno's eyes narrowed. Renjun did know. He'd done it because Jeno felt safe and comfortable and his aura of red and silver had been so beautiful Renjun would have done anything to be closer to it then. And because he'd seen that fleeting hint of fear in Jeno's eyes, and it'd made him uneasy. And because—the simplest reason, the reason that was the most irrational—he hadn't wanted Jeno to leave. None of it made sense. Maybe it had been his human side.

One thing was certain. If he said any of this out loud, he'd die from embarrassment.

So Renjun said, "How long was I out?"

Some spots of red and silver still played around Jeno, though they were faint now. They slid in and out of Renjun’s vision when he blinked. Renjun resisted the urge to try to touch one with his hand.

"Not long. Less than a minute. You woke up pretty fast after I shook you a little."

Renjun winced. "I didn't mean to weird you out. I don't know what came over me."

He waited for Jeno to question it, though he had no answers.

Jeno pointed behind Renjun. "You know what’s weird? That’s weird."

Renjun turned, and the rest of it came back to him, the clips on the record reel not quite in order. The beginning when Jae pulled him over. Back against the wall, heart in his throat. Hitting the ground. The end when Jae didn't matter anymore because Jeno entered the room. The rest of it in between. Fear on his tongue. Tasting it. Without thinking, Renjun licked his lower lip.

Renjun shivered.

"Are you cold?" Jeno asked.

"No," Renjun said distantly. He touched his side, and ran a hand over his ribs. The area was still tender where Jae hit him, but it hurt less than he would’ve thought.

That couldn't have been him. But it had been him. It was as if he’d liked the fear. He had wanted to hurt Jae. He wouldn’t deny that. But it wasn’t like he wanted to like it. He wrapped his arms around himself.

"What's wrong with him?" Jeno asked.

Jae stood unmoving. Renjun knew it was the exact spot he'd left Jae in, though he didn't know how he knew. Jae's eyes stared ahead, blinking slowly. Renjun couldn’t feel his aura.

Renjun sent his magic out and probed for Jae's core. It wasn't weaker than usual, or damaged.

It was gone.

The only energies in the room were his own, humming still, buzzing with unfamiliar currents, and Jeno's, fluid and dripping with power. Power that drew Renjun toward him like a moth toward flame.

Renjun realized then that he’d used magic to probe at Jae, even though he'd already used up any power coming from the cut on his arm. He’d used magic, and he’d done it without blood.

That should've made him happy, but he went cold. Something was wrong with him.

Renjun clutched his arms tighter, and drew his magic back into himself.

As if Jeno could sense Renjun's distress, he took a step toward Renjun.

"Don't," Renjun said, and Jeno stopped, looking a little hurt. "I—Something's wrong with me. I did something with my magic."

"I know. I felt your magic. What did you do?" Jeno said.

"I don't know what I did, but I think." Renjun swallowed. "I think it was bad."

Jae turned toward Renjun. No aura, vacant stare. Renjun didn't want to look at him, but he couldn't turn away. An echo of the taste of fear lingered in the back of his throat and he still liked it.

"He was going to bite me and I didn't want him to, but I wasn't going to—it wasn't like I wanted to—" Or had he? He had wanted to hurt him.

"He was going to bite you?" The specks of red in Jeno's aura darkened.

"That's not important," Renjun said.

"What do you mean that's not important?"

"It's not important anymore."

"What do you want?" Jae asked in a slow, flat voice. He walked toward them, and Renjun took a step back because he didn't want to see those eyes up close.

When he reached them, Jae dropped to his knees and pushed his head against the ground, prostrating himself in front of them. "What do you want me to do?"

Renjun took another step back. "Get up," he said, his voice shaking. Jae stood. "Stop being weird. I don't want you to do anything, why are you asking?"

Jae blinked several times, and Renjun saw a spark of recognition flare behind the blankness. From recognition it was one step to full on terror, and Jae began babbling. "Don't hurt me, I promise I'll delete the pics. I'm deleting them right now."

Jae whipped out his phone and when he pulled up the images, Jeno snarled at seeing himself with his mouth against Renjun's arm. Jeno took a step toward Jae, but stopped when Renjun laid a hand on his arm. 

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill him right here,” Jeno said.

“It’s not worth it,” Renjun hissed.

“I don’t care if it’s worth it—”

“You will care if the professors find out and decide to suspend you.” Jeno hesitated.

Jae didn’t seem to notice them talking. A couple presses of a finger, and the pictures were gone. "I can make it up to you. I'll do anything you want,” Jae said.

"Just leave me alone and get out of here," Renjun said.

"That's it?"

"Didn't you hear him? Leave," Jeno said.

Jae fled from the room. Renjun thought he heard him saying, "I can't feel anything. Why can't I feel anything?"

"What were those pictures about?" Jeno asked in a low, dangerous voice.

Renjun didn't want to tell him, but maybe he deserved to know. Those were pictures of him too, after all. "He was going to go to the professors with those if I didn't do...what he wanted."

"What did he want?"

"Just my blood," Renjun said. He needed to sound casual. He knew it wasn't a big deal to a vampire. Maybe Jeno would think he was weak. Maybe Jeno would laugh if he knew how sickness rose in Renjun's stomach, bile crawling up his esophagus. His voice came out faint instead. Best effort, all things considering. His hands shook, but it wasn't like Jeno would notice that.

"You're shaking," Jeno said. "Did he bite you before?" Renjun had underestimated his observation skills, and now Jeno was going to ask why Renjun was overreacting.

Renjun spoke before Jeno could ask. "He didn't bite me, but he had some of my blood once. From my arms. Maybe it's not a big deal to you, but it...it made me want to fucking throw up."

He didn't meet Jeno's eyes. He didn't want to see condescension.

"Whatever you did to him, he deserved it," Jeno said. Renjun looked up. He hadn't expected that.

"You think so?"

"Yeah, I would've killed him for even taking those photos." Right, Jeno's position could have been compromised by the photos too. Jeno took Renjun's arm between his hands, the one with the cut from earlier. "Does it always make you feel like throwing up?" Jeno asked. More quietly, "Did I make you feel like that?"

Renjun wasn't sure where Jeno was going with this. Did he want to make amends? "No, you didn't," Renjun said.

"How do you feel when I do it?"

Against his will, Renjun felt heat rising up his body. "I don't have to tell you that."

Jeno’s mouth quirked up on one side. "Why? You scared to tell me?"

Renjun glared at him. Between gritted teeth he said, "I'm not scared. I liked it, okay? A little bit." The last part was a lie, and Jeno must have known because he smirked.

Renjun felt a little like digging himself a hole to go die in, and a little like kicking Jeno in the shin, until Jeno lifted his arm closer to his mouth.

"If you don’t dislike it, can I?" Jeno asked. “To heal the cut.”

"As if we haven't done this so many times before," Renjun grumbled, ignoring the little twinge of gratefulness that came from Jeno’s offer. When Jeno looked up at him, unmoving, he said, "You’re not seriously waiting for me to say yes."

“So what if I am?”

Renjun flushed, then felt a little more like digging himself a hole to go die in. He’d liked it better when Jeno wasn’t trying to be nice. “Fine, have at it, vampire.”

Jeno licked his arm slowly. Even though they'd done this many times before, it was different this time. Renjun’s nerves felt on edge with the tingling of his skin and the humming in his blood.

"Do you have to be so slow?" Renjun said.

Jeno snorted but didn't speed up. "Where'd Jae take blood from?" Jeno asked after he was done. The tingling of the cut healing added onto the tingling of Renjun's skin.

Even though it was weeks ago, Renjun could pinpoint the spot, right under his wrist. "My other arm," he said.

"Where on your other arm?"

"It doesn't matter."

"I just want to know," Jeno said in a way that told Renjun he wasn't going to drop it.

"Ugh, okay, here." Renjun circled the spot on his wrist.

Jeno grasped his wrist before Renjun could snatch it back. Jeno ran his thumb over the spot. “Here, right?”

“You don’t have to touch it—”

Jeno dipped his head down, and licked it too.

Renjun gasped. "What are you doing?" Renjun pushed Jeno's head up, and swallowed when he saw Jeno's eyes had gone a dark amber.

"Removing his taint," Jeno said.

"That is not how it works," Renjun said. Jeno shrugged. Renjun rolled his eyes and snatched his arm back. But after, his stomach didn't churn so bad when he thought about that spot on his wrist. Some time after that, he didn’t think about it at all.

* * *

Jae stopped showing up in mixed class, and later Jao made an announcement that he'd dropped out of the academy for personal reasons.

Chenle whispered, "I don’t know. It was like his aura had disappeared or something. And he was moving slow like a human, and he couldn't even transform anymore, not that he's ever been good at that, but he should have been capable of the basics. It was like when someone gets sick, but really really sick. Everyone was scared he caught some really bad disease."

"Too bad for him if he did," Donghyuck said.

"We thought it was contagious," Chenle said, glaring at Donghyuck.

"Well you're still fine, so."

Even when Renjun told them that he might have done something that triggered it, heart in his throat, they didn't believe it.

"Sure I’ll believe you roughed him up with magic, which, good for you and we should celebrate, but are you suggesting you messed up his vampire powers? Because I'm pretty sure that's impossible no matter how much magic you use," Donghyuck said with a laugh.

"He wasn't very much of a vampire to begin with. He probably just got sick," Chenle agreed.

Renjun began to believe it himself. It was easier that way.

* * *

Thankfully the tingling on Renjun’s skin faded over time, though it didn't go away completely. It settled into a second skin underneath the surface. A dull thrum. He could forget about it for the most part.

For the most part. The feeling intensified when he brushed against someone else's skin, in a way that he was embarrassed to say he craved, and he'd remember. He thought about asking Ten about it, but scrapped the idea. He knew how that conversation would go. "Hey I used some magic and now my skin's itchy, but under the surface." And when Ten asked what kind of magic and what he did, he'd go mute, because at this point he was no longer sure himself. Ten would probably chase him out, thinking Renjun was making a really bad joke and wasting his precious time.

Mostly, he got used to it. It was worth it because he hadn't had to use blood for magic since the thrum began, and he was somehow certain they were related. It didn't make his magic more powerful, but it made using it easy, almost natural. He couldn't quite believe it. Sometimes he'd light up a small flame at the end of his fingertip to make sure he hadn't dreamed it up.

He started to get used to this, though he would kick himself mentally every time he did. He knew with the same certainty that it wouldn't last.

It was harder to get used to the other changes. Everyone had become more colorful, as if some photoshop amateur had taken the lens of his vision and upped the saturation. Every vampire's aura had sparks of color, and he could sense energies in a way he'd never been able to before. All picturesque HD definition.

Sometimes he'd be lounging in the apartment when he felt the presence of blazing furnace level power behind his back. He'd almost fall off the couch each time before remembering it was Donghyuck. Then Donghyuck would walk in, and he'd be stunned again, because he didn't remember Donghyuck looking that striking. He'd never before noticed the mole on the side of Donghyuck's face.

That was the norm, not the exception. Everyone was striking. Jaemin's gray blue aura and those eyes. Those eyes. Chenle streaks of lavender and when had he gotten that jawline? Jeno red and silver, and Renjun had not noticed that side profile and those muscular arms before. Okay, he had, but not like this. He even spent a whole class studying the face of his old nemesis Joowon, and wondering if he was going crazy or if the buck teeth were kind of working for him now.

"Who are you staring at?" Chenle whisper-hissed after class. And because it was Chenle whispering wasn't all that different from talking. He was heard by everyone around them, and then it was too late.

"No one," Renjun snapped, which in retrospect wasn't the right move. But hey hindsight is 20-20, right?

"Oh, does Junnie have a crush?" Jaemin asked. With a grin because he was the bane of Renjun's existence. Renjun spent a little too long staring at his grin, which he only realized when Jaemin's grin faltered.

He tried to recover. "I already told you not to call me Junnie. That's reserved for Donghyuck."

"I'll let him use it for this special occasion," Donghyuck said, also grinning because he was the real bane of Renjun's existence.

"You're about to lose the privilege, Donghyuck."

"Didn't realize it was a privilege, Junnie."

"You have a crush?" Jeno butt in, late to the conversation, his mouth open in a kind of dumb but kind of attractive way. For some reason he didn't sound as teasing as the rest of them. He didn't sound particularly happy about it. Renjun figured he wasn't big on the romance thing in general, since he didn't seem to care for having steady relationships.

"No, I don't," Renjun said.

"Can confirm," Donghyuck said, and Renjun thought he might be lenient this time and decide Donghyuck wasn't the bane of his existence, until Donghyuck spoke again, "If he had a crush, he wouldn't be staring at them. He'd be hiding from them like the dumbass he is. I know this for a fact."

"You know jack shit, Donghyuck Lee," Renjun said, and went for the chokehold. While he wrapped his arms around Donghyuck's neck, he noticed another mole on Donghyuck's neck. He might have stared at that for a little too long too.

* * *

Feeling all the energy around him made Renjun crave it sometimes.

Renjun started to anticipate when the others came around. Jaemin still dropped by the most, but more and more often he brought Jeno, or Jeno and Jisung. Chenle did a half-hearted job of avoiding the other three, but he came by often enough that he couldn't keep out of their way all the time. When they were all around, because their couch wasn't that large, Renjun had no choice but to sit against one of the others. He could indulge in their energy thrumming at his side, or even better at both sides, with none of them the wiser. And if once, or twice, or maybe a few more times than that, he let himself lean into one of them more than he usually would have, none of them seemed to notice. Excluding one embarrassing time when he let his head fall on Jeno's shoulder and Jeno tensed up. He'd managed to save that one with an, "Sorry, almost fell asleep. Donghyuck's so boring." Donghyuck's outraged protests had drowned out anything Jeno could have said.

When it was just the Donghyuck and Renjun, and Renjun couldn't help himself, he squeezed into Donghyuck's armchair and curled against Donghyuck's side. "What's with you being weirdly affectionate all of a sudden? Are you trying to steal my chair? Because I'm not giving it up," Donghyuck would say, sometimes half-muffled from being shoved into the side. The chair wasn't really made for two, but Renjun was small enough that they could make it work. Donghyuck would complain, but eventually he'd shift himself into a more comfortable position and continue whatever he was doing. And Renjun's skin would burn beautifully with that furnace power against his side.

One time Jaemin and Jeno walked in during a time like this. Donghyuck had given Jaemin a spare key, of all people, saying it was only fair because Renjun had given Chenle a spare key. Renjun very reasonably insisted that it wasn't the same at all.

"Chenle's an angel, and Jaemin's the devil." Jaemin had gotten a recent upgrade from annoyance to actual devil since his current idea of fun was teasing Renjun about nonexistent crushes.

"Chenle's a brat."

"A bratty angel, but the point still stands."

Donghyuck didn't listen. Which is how Jeno and Jaemin found Renjun curled up against Donghyuck's side, scrolling through his phone while Donghyuck flipped through some advanced magic book.

"Do you two always sit like that when you have, you know, a full couch?" Jaemin asked. He had an eyebrow raised while Jeno's eyes had gone a fraction larger than usual.

This would have been a good time to migrate to said couch, but Renjun was reluctant to leave the warmth. "Renjun's been touchy lately," Donghyuck said. “He’s in a mood.”

"Am not. It's just cold. You're warm." Hot really, fire really, spilling out over Renjun's skin, dazzling him in and out of incoherence.

"So you admit my hotness," Donghyuck said.

"Hah," Renjun said.

"Hah?"

"Try again in your next life, Donghyuck. You're a slob."

Donghyuck kicked him out of the chair.

* * *

The thought of demonic activity had hung over the academy like a fog since the start of the year, but even this seemed to be dispelled by the rising buzz around the annual sports festival.

It was one of those events meant to foster witch and vampire interactions, and boost general school spirit and morale. School spirit could go die as far as Renjun was concerned. The sports festival was really just a chance for athletic students to show off, and for the athletic clubs to make a good showing. They took the sports festival real seriously—too seriously in Renjun's opinion, but it wasn't like anybody here cared about his opinion—and because apparently jocks were as much appreciated in the supernatural community as the human one, that meant most of the academy took it seriously too.

Because vampires had an edge for physical strength and speed, some of the events were separated by vampire and witch, which Renjun thought killed the point of the whole intermingling aspect. These included all the running and swimming events. For some reason the boat races and the odd event of tree climbing were open to all. Archery and horse riding were also open to all but that made sense—strength didn't mean accuracy or the ability to handle an animal. Falconry was also open to all, but pretty much rigged in the favor of witches. No one had thought to ban familiars, so for the past two years Yuta had destroyed all the competition with his hawk. Renjun made it a point not to watch that one.

There were some goodwill events sprinkled here and there. Renjun called them goodwill events because he was sure they were added solely to pretend the academy was trying on the supernatural relations front. Like a three-legged race where one of the runners had to be a vampire and the other had to be a witch. No one wanted to participate in those. Renjun didn't anyway.

During his second year he'd been dragged into the three-legged race and succeeded in nothing but tripping both himself and his vampire partner up in the first five seconds and getting a taste of the track.

All in all, Renjun could care less about the sports festival. He wasn't particularly athletic, and he didn't care to be. Nor did he care to watch his fellow students show off; they could do just fine without his attention. Maybe in a non-supernatural school he could hold his own on one of the running events, maybe place in the solid middle or even toward the front, but he still wouldn't participate unless he was strong armed into it. At this academy, he doubted he would place, but thankfully there was no one to strong arm him into it. Witches were worse than vampires for the races, honestly. Magic was permitted, which was the same as saying they could play dirty.

The cultural festival later in the year was much better. Why couldn't they just have two of those?

Renjun wouldn't show up at the sports festival at all if it weren't for two reasons.

One, he had to go support Chenle and Donghyuck because unfortunately he did consider himself a good friend. Chenle ran the 2000m and he was one of the academy's best runners. He usually placed in the top three. Donghyuck ran the relay race. He wasn't a good runner, but he was one of the best at playing dirty. And maybe Renjun did like seeing the runners fall over like dominoes while trying to dodge each other’s magic. Or mysteriously lose clothing. Or run into each other. Or that one time Donghyuck tripped over, got last place, and sulked for three days afterward. That time was the best.

Two, the menace dubbed Yuta Nakamoto decided that as one of the academy's largest internal events, the sports festival was the place to make some dough for the botany club. They ran a booth each year, near the med ward's booth. Renjun spent the weeks up to the sports festival avoiding Yuta like the plague, but the man was a bloodhound. He had the eyes of a hawk, both figuratively and literally because of his hawk familiar. Yuta always found Renjun in time to sign him up for multiple shifts at the booth. Multiple! No one else had multiple. Yuta would say, "I know you're free" and saunter off, leaving Renjun seething and wondering how did he know. How did he know?

It almost made him want to sign up for one of the sports events. Okay, that was a lie.

But he did entertain the thought as he intoned for the umpteenth time, "Botany booth. Get your plants and potions here."

Maybe tree climbing. No one watched that, and no one would care if he decided to forfeit before he made it halfway up.

"Can you try to sound like you have a soul?" Donghyuck said beside him.

"My soul died at minimum two hours ago," Renjun said. "May it rest in peace."

"It's not so bad," Donghyuck said.

"Your shift just started. You try doing this for five hours. And I have two more shifts tomorrow." Renjun hoped one day the sports festival would be shortened from two days to one, but that was unlikely to happen before Yuta graduated.

One of the older students approached the booth, his eyes shifting from side to side, hands in his pockets. Not obvious at all.

"I'm, uh, I'm looking for a good time," the student said, flushing as he met Renjun's disinterested gaze. If Renjun's soul wasn't dead, he might've smiled a little too sharp and said something like, "Sorry, didn't hear you. Repeat that?" But Renjun's soul was buried deep underground by now, so he rolled his eyes at the code phrase and hesitated long enough to make the student uncomfortable, before waving him to a curtained off section in the back where Yuta and a couple others sat with the _other_ goods. Sometimes Renjun questioned if Yuta was trying to lose customers.

"You're supposed to say, 'A good time's in the back'," Yuta said, coming up behind them.

"I try not to lie," Renjun said.

"I'll let you off this time," Yuta said, unfazed, and scanned their table. "We'll want to bring out more of the energy shots soon. Unpack some of those, Renjun." Yuta went over to inspect the other tables.

Yuta was right, though Renjun hated to admit it. The sports festival was prime real estate for their club. Renjun didn't know how the sales were going in the back tent, but general sales were beyond good. His and Donghyuck's table carried potions Yuta had nicknamed energy shots, basically caffeine on steroids. These were second most popular among students, right under the love potions. The students manning the love potion table were hand-chosen by Yuta. They smiled, winked, and flitted from customer to customer, spinning tales that would have put politicians to shame. A necessary skill for love potions, because they weren't all that effective.

Donghyuck's silver tongue would have been a good fit for that, but he insisted on sitting with Renjun. The one and only time Yuta put them at the love potion table, Renjun lasted about 10 minutes before plucking a potion out of a customer's hand and saying, "You don't want this one. Or any one. Like what do you think will happen? This is why romance is dead." Yuta hadn't made that mistake again.

Renjun was carrying an armful of energy shots back to the table when someone called his name. In the twilight wash of blue gray, Renjun had to squint for a second before he recognized the caller.

"YangYang," he called back. He deposited the bottles on the table while his friend walked up.

"This is YangYang, my friend from crafts," Renjun said to Donghyuck. YangYang beamed at Donghyuck.

"I didn't know you had any friends besides me," Donghyuck said, pantomiming tears. "I'm so proud."

"...and this is Donghyuck, who used to be my friend but I'm disowning him."

"Then you'll only have one friend again," YangYang said.

YangYang and Donghyuck snickered while Renjun tried to get at YangYang across the table. YangYang hopped out of the way and Renjun only succeeded at almost knocking over the bottles in front of him.

"Jaemin," Donghyuck shouted suddenly, seeing the familiar caramel hair. "Jeno, Jisung." The three of them turned in unison. Not at all creepy. Recognition lit on their faces, and they walked over. They entered the booth, and glanced around at the tables with interest.

"I didn't know you guys worked a booth," Jaemin said.

"We would have told you, but it doesn't have much for vampires and it closes around 8," Donghyuck said. "I didn't know you would be here so early."

"Jisung insisted," Jaemin said. "He had some family stuff last year so he didn't get to go. So we're here to give him the full experience."

Jisung's face scrunched up a little. "I didn't _insist_ ," he insisted. "I was just curious." Renjun was struck again by the dichotomy of the Jisung in front of him and the Jisung created by Chenle's brief comments over the years. Though Renjun knew he wasn't, Jisung seemed harmless.

Jeno picked up one of the bottles and turned it over. "Energy shot, lasts 3 hours?" he read.

Renjun was distracted from the three of them when YangYang picked up another of the bottles, for maximum 12 hour energy, or a guaranteed all-nighter.

He leaned over the table, almost knocking bottles over again, to grab the bottle from YangYang.

"You do not need this. You're hyperactive enough as it is."

YangYang tried to take the bottle back. "That's not fair. What if I need to pull an all-nighter?"

"Too bad. This is for my own safety. You should stay away from all of these. In fact, you should should go buy those," he said, pointing at another table. "They’re good for calming down children like you."

"Hey! At least I’m not an old man. Maybe I should buy one of these energy shots for you."

Then Renjun saw a pair of antennae poke out from under YangYang's hood before disappearing again. He gaped.

"You brought your auto—" He broke off coughing. "—your bugs? To the sports festival?"

YangYang shrugged.

Renjun didn't notice the others watching them until Jaemin interrupted. "Who's this?"

Jaemin and Jeno eyed YangYang with some curiosity and some suspicion, while Jisung was more interested in looking around the booth.

Renjun felt a little bad that he had forgotten to introduce YangYang to any of the others, and as a transfer student who wasn't in mixed class, YangYang probably didn't know many people.

Before Renjun could fix that, YangYang reached out a hand and beamed at them. They shook his hand with increasing trepidation as he reeled off, "I'm YangYang. I'm in creation magic with Renjun. Transferred in this year, creation magic specialty. Are you vampires? That's so cool. I haven't talked to any vampires yet. I'm not in any shared classes and I haven't gotten used to everything yet so I haven't had the chance to. I've been meaning to though, so this is awesome. What's it like, having fangs?"

"Uh..." Jeno said.

"Jaemin, Jeno, Jisung," Renjun said, pointing at each, and cutting off the question. "Don't mind YangYang. He's weird."

"That's why you love me," YangYang said.

"Love is pushing it, but sure, whatever."

YangYang turned and grinned in a way that meant nothing but trouble. "Speaking of love, I see that love potions table." It was hard not to. There were signs with big bubble lettering around the table.

"You're not going there," Renjun said. "They don't even work."

"How are you so sure?”

“I work here.”

“Wait, does that mean you’ve tried them? Whoa, Renjun, I didn’t know..."

Renjun ignored him. "My shift's over in five, so I'm going to sign off with Yuta. I'll meet you here after, YangYang." He turned to Donghyuck. "Don't let him buy anything."

Renjun didn't need to go find Yuta, because Yuta slid in right then with an arm around Renjun's shoulder. Renjun shrugged it off.

"Trying to scare off our customers again, Renjun?" Yuta asked. He turned toward YangYang and the three vampires with a winning smile that Renjun found more scary than convincing. "What are you all looking for?"

YangYang stuck out his tongue at Renjun. "I want the most potent love potion you have," he said.

Later, the two of them left the booth and walked through the festival. Jaemin, Jeno, and Jisung joined them for a short time before they left to watch some of the vampire races. Renjun elbowed YangYang multiple times because in a matter of minutes he asked what blood tasted like, if Dracula was real and were they related and how did that work because he was from Transylvania and they were Korean, and can they survive on animal blood, is that a thing?

After the others left, they got chicken wings from one of the booths, settled into the grass, and watched the boat races while the moon rose overhead.

* * *

Donghyuck found Renjun the next evening. He burst into the booth and ran over to Renjun, slamming both hands on the table.

"One of our team members dropped out of the relay race. We need someone to take his spot. You've got to do it."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. Does it look like there's someone else here?"

Before he could respond, he was pulled up out of his seat and ushered out of the booth. Donghyuck tugged him along down the path, Yuta's shouts of, "Where are you going?" fading out behind them.

"I don't run," Renjun protested.

"You run fast enough. I've seen you in class. And I'm the anchor so I'll make it work. Just don't fall too far behind and don't drop the baton before you get it to me."

"Donghyuck!"

"We're desperate. Our backup got injured, and all the good runners are on the other teams. Please, Renjun?"

Renjun made a vague noise of protest, but he was already giving in. He knew Donghyuck wouldn't have asked if he had other options, and having something over Donghyuck was always useful.

Renjun regretted agreeing when he stood on the track, lines of white caging him in. Lane 4 out of 12 teams. Wind blowing against him, the lights of the stadium bright white, the spectators dull background figures behind its glare. Third runner, right before Donghyuck. Shouldn't he have been second, so they would have more time to catch up if he wasn't fast enough?

His heart beat fast, despite the mantra he kept running in his head. It's just a school race, no one cares. Just 100 meters. Except he didn't want to let Donghyuck down.

Or maybe, he didn't want to let himself down.

The starting whistle went off.

He saw the runners on the other side of the track sprint forward. Immediately, a crack resounded through the field, along with a bright flash of light. Renjun thought he saw a figure thrown off the track. No one around him even looked surprised. Maybe he shouldn’t have been, since he’d seen the same scene from the bleachers before, but seeing it from the field level was a whole lot more visceral, with his gut saying not safe, get out of here now you fool. The race dissolved into flashes of light and sound, sometimes different colors or shapes. Patches of smoke. Renjun could barely make out the runners, who continued doggedly forward.

Some of them made it to the second runners, and they were off like a shot. Renjun could see it clearer now. They ran while hurling bolts of fire or ice, emitting blinding flashes of light, and sending wind that could knock their opponents off course. No one was trying to stay in their lane. Someone shoved someone else with her hands, and he yelled as he veered off the track. He came to an abrupt halt once off the track, and threw his baton at the ground.

Renjun bent his knees and waited, his hand held behind him. He cursed Donghyuck for getting him into this. He didn't care anymore what place he ended up in, he'd just like to get out unscathed. Donghyuck could start from the very back of the pack for all he cared.

The pounding of footsteps resounded closer and closer. A baton was pressed into his hand, cold metal on warm skin, his fingers closed around it, and he was off.

The wind howled against him as he ran. His body had never felt so light—it'd been light since that day in the classroom but he hadn't realized it’d feel even lighter while running. He was strangely aware of the witches near him, dots of energy positioned around him on the track. Three in front, five behind, three walking off the track because their teammates had been knocked out earlier. A flare of energy came from one dot behind him and he swayed to the right. Heat passed over his shoulder, and he saw the tail end of the flame as a spot against the inside of his eyelids.

It was as if everyone else were moving in slow motion. Not at half his speed, but just half a frame slower. Lights burst around him, but most were aimed at the runners in the front. Those aimed at him he could feel, a surge of energy target on his back, the warning barely giving enough time to get out of the way. He knew if more than one person targeted him at once he wouldn't be able to dodge. He wasn't sure how he was able to dodge at all.

He was faster than he remembered. He wasn't so far behind the closest runner anymore, and the runner’s legs were still moving in that half a frame slower time. Within heartbeats, the runner's back was within the touch of his fingertips.

The runner turned his head enough to see Renjun coming. A flash of panic ran across the runner's face, and energy shot out from his hand, a sticky white substance hurtling at Renjun's feet at full speed.

Renjun's magic unfurled around him. He jumped, or he remembered jumping, but he was up higher in the air than a jump should take him. Far over the white substance, up to the runner's shoulder.

Renjun caught a glimpse of the runner's open mouth. His magic hooked into some bright energy as he jumped—not on purpose, but it was so close by. A minuscule amount of it seeped into him, and he went higher. Renjun had the vague thought that with more energy he could soar.

But he knew with the oddest certainty that the energy he'd hooked into wasn't his. And that without belonging to him it could only give him scraps.

It could belong to him. It wouldn’t be easy, but it could be his.

What?

Renjun landed on the ground, and his magic regathered into him.

He ran. His feet led him to Donghyuck and he pressed the baton into Donghyuck's hand at third place in the pack. He walked off the track, but he couldn't stay still. The lights were too bright, a burning white that almost made him tear up. Everyone's eyes were on the race, so no one noticed as he ran down the field, needing to get away. He was supposed to watch Donghyuck, but he couldn’t stay. He'd tell him he didn't feel well later. Vampire auras had gone from specks of color to swirling colorful mists like when Jeno had walked into the classroom that day. Faces in the distance passed by, sharp despite the distance. Extra HD.

A hand grabbed his and they were running together. The hand was familiar, and why he trusted that he didn't know, but he let it pull him past other students and across the festival grounds.

The hand pulled him into a bathroom.

Red and silver danced in his vision.

Jeno bit his lip. Renjun couldn't identify the emotions on his face. Uncertainty, and guilt? "You're lucky I saw you before anyone else did."

"What are you talking about?" Renjun asked.

"Look."

Renjun faced himself in the mirror, and saw orange-yellow cat's eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe you thought things were gonna happen this chapter but no you get a filler sports festival chapter instead
> 
> hope you enjoyed haha


	23. after the races

Renjun faced himself in the mirror, and saw orange-yellow cat's eyes. Renjun touched a hand to his face. Nose, mouth, cheeks, the pressure of his fingertips against them. It was all the same except the eyes. He half expected the reflection to start moving, to say, “Got you. You thought this wasn’t a dream?” But it didn’t move.

He didn't know how long he stood there without a word, transfixed on the mirror. He didn't know when he started shaking, just that his whole arm was trembling.

"What the hell is going on?" He said it aloud by accident, his voice hoarse, and he saw Jeno turn to him in the mirror.

"You don't know?" Jeno said.

Renjun walked up to the mirror and put his hand on the glass. For a moment he thought it'd send ripples through the glass and destroy the image in front of him. This close he could see the eyes— _his_ eyes—were not the exact same shade of orange-yellow as the boy from the forest. They were a shade more orange, the shade he saw in his dreams.

"What is going on?"

"You don't know," Jeno said. It wasn't a question this time. But it wasn't like Jeno was accusing him for not knowing. It was like he was afraid of this.

Renjun slammed his palm against the mirror. Jeno startled, and there was that sick little part of Renjun that was pleased that he could startle a vampire, but it was barely noticeable, white noise against the cacophony in his head. Suddenly he wanted the mirror to splinter to fragments. He didn’t want to see the eyes anymore. Didn’t want to think about the eyes, the demon, even magic itself.

His hand curled into a fist, and he hit the mirror again. If he hit that spot again, the mirror might crack— He was about to keep going when a hand closed around his wrist and an arm draped itself over his shoulder.

"You'll hurt yourself," Jeno said.

"It doesn't matter." Renjun said, but it was more to himself than Jeno.

Jeno dragged him away, ignoring his protests that he wasn't done yet. He was almost there. Jeno moved him some distance out of reach from the mirror, and didn't let go of him until Renjun stopped pulling against him. Stupid vampire strength.

"Calm down," Jeno hissed.

"You try calming down when your eyes go weird and look like a demon's..."

Jeno glanced around them, and made an exasperated noise. "Do you want someone else to hear? I didn't know you'd freak. I thought you knew."

"How am I supposed to know? This hasn't happened to me before."

Jeno stared at him. Red and silver danced around them.

"This has happened before, hasn't it?" Renjun whispered. Red and silver. He sank to the ground, until he was squatting, and closed his eyes. He felt dizzy, like the world was tipping around him. Or maybe he was tipping and the world was the same. It sure didn't feel the same. "That's why I can see auras in color now, and why everything looks sharp. And why everything feels like—why it's too much."

"You can see auras in color?"

Renjun opened one eye and peered up at Jeno. Jeno would care about that part. "Yeah. Your's is red and silver. It's actually quite pretty."

"It's pretty?" Jeno sounded almost self-conscious about it. Renjun didn't know whether he should be irritated that Jeno was worried about the color of his aura while he was freaking out about, you know, cat eyes and a distorted perception and maybe whatever he'd done to Jae that he had pushed to the back of his mind because he didn't really know what happened and he had other things to think about and okay maybe he had thought Jae deserved it a little. Or if he should be thankful that Jeno being self-conscious—seriously?—distracted him from freaking out.

"Are you trying to get me to repeat that because I'm not going to," Renjun said.

"What? No way," Jeno said, a tad too fast.

The distraction did help. Renjun took a breath, and forced himself to think. Jeno sank down into a squat beside him, and rested his head on one hand, watching Renjun.

"Why didn't you tell me it happened before?" Renjun asked.

"I thought you knew, like I said."

"You thought I knew? Why didn't you ask me about it? And why didn't you go tell the professors?" Then again, maybe he had. Renjun tensed again. "Did you tell the professors?"

Jeno grimaced. "No. I mean—I thought, well, maybe, I'd imagined it. It didn't last very long."

Renjun gave Jeno an incredulous look. He didn’t think Jeno had that active of an imagination, and he knew Jeno trusted his instincts.

Jeno crossed his arms over his knees. "That night with the demon kind of got to me. I've never been that—I don't know, powerless."

Renjun had a strong urge to say, "Welcome to the club", but he didn't. Jeno didn't sound like himself. Or maybe this was the Jeno he'd never seen. It was scary to think that underneath the power and the strong exterior, Jeno might be another boy like him who didn't know what he was doing. Either way, he was admitting weakness, and as far as Renjun knew, vampires didn't do that. Not to each other, and especially not to outside parties. Renjun didn't know if Jeno knew what he sounded like, or if he just wanted it off his chest. The moment felt at once too fragile and too intimate. Renjun wasn't sure if he should be there.

"I thought about that night a lot. I'm still thinking about it, like what I could've done differently. The part that sucks is I don’t know if doing anything differently would have mattered. Maybe I wanted a chance to fight him again to prove that I could do...something."

"So you thought you imagined my eyes because what? You wanted to fight a demon?”

“It sounds stupid when you say it like that.”

“Because it is stupid,” Renjun said. He was mildly cheered by Jeno’s look of affront. 

Then he remembered he didn't have the luxury of feeling cheery. "Are you going to tell the professors now?"

"No—I mean, I don't know if I should."

Jeno's uncertainty was weird, but what was even weirder was that edge of guilt that kept creeping back.

"Do you know something I don't?" Renjun asked. "Why wouldn't you tell them?"

"Do you want me to tell them?"

"No, but..." Renjun didn't want to tell them, but his reasons were completely personal. He imagined being dissected before the professors, an academic discourse of what could possibly be wrong with him, with Park smiling viciously down from a raised pedestal and nodding along. "But I don't know why _you_ wouldn't."

"I spent the past couple weeks trying to find out more about demons," Jeno said.

"Been there, done that. Pretty sure we told you the library is useless."

"No, listen. I asked my parents about it."

"Subtle," Renjun mumbled. He couldn't help himself.

Jeno shoved him lightly. "I told them I was curious because of the increased patrols around campus. They were around back then, during the war, and we have some records in our library at home."

"You have a library in your house? Do you live in a mansion or something?" Renjun really couldn't help himself. Where in the city would they get a place with space for a full-blown library? Then again, of course these old vampire families would be filthy rich. He had been to Asomateus, he shouldn't have been surprised. Life was unfair.

"Listen," Jeno said. "They wouldn't tell me much, but they did tell me that the demons possessed humans. And that some of the stronger ones could do more, not possess witches or vampires, but something close. You're part human, so..."

"So you think the demon possessed me?" Renjun covered his face with his hands. "If this was supposed to help calm me down, it's not working."

"I don't know. I don't think so. I think he tried and it's not working right because your witch side is interfering. I don't think you'd be acting so normal if you were possessed."

Great. His witch side was good for something. Very reassuring. At least it meant what happened to Jae wasn’t his fault really, if what Jeno said was true. It’d make sense. Why else would the demon have left them alive? But he couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t that simple. Because what he’d done to Jae had felt personal, like it was him, not some demon, that had wanted to do it. Could a demon change what you wanted?

"If I'm...part possessed or whatever, isn't that more reason to tell the professors?"

Jeno shook his head. "You know what they did to the possessed during the war, Renjun? They locked them up, and then they killed them."

"Oh."

"I don't think they'd kill you, of course," Jeno went on hurriedly. It would have been reassuring if he sounded more convinced. "But I don't want to say anything when we don’t know how they’d react. I don’t want them to expel you, or lock you up."

"Thanks for that."

"I'm serious."

"No, I mean it. Thanks," Renjun said. Quiet fell between them. The red and silver around them was fading now, receding back to sparks as Renjun blinked his eyes. "But what now?"

"It should be temporary?" Again, very convincing. "Possessions are always temporary, but temporary could be days, or weeks, or longer. I don’t know. There should be some way to get rid of it faster too. We can look for that." Jeno reached over and placed a hand on Renjun's shoulder. Gingerly, like he wasn't quite sure if it fit there. Under usual circumstances, Renjun would have shrugged it off, but he let it linger. "And it's not like you're—you're still the same. You're definitely not actually possessed."

"Very reassuring," Renjun said. "I don't feel the same. I feel weird."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, it's been a weird couple weeks. I just want everything to be normal again. Even if that means sitting in Yuta's booth all day trying to sell love potions." It was hard to tell how much he believed that. He did want to feel normal, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to lose the magic, the beauty he could now see, or the feeling of energy flush against his skin.

"You are normal. Mostly."

"Right, because this is normal," Renjun said, pointing at his eyes.

Jeno just gestured at the mirror. Renjun stood and looked at himself. His eyes had gone back to their usual dark brown.

"There's still some dots of red and silver around you," Renjun said.

"And you think it's pretty, so what's the problem?" Jeno said.

Renjun gaped at him. Did Jeno just try to tease him? No. Couldn't be. "Don't try to turn my words on me, Jeno," he said.

"Wasn't trying to." Jeno smiled, with a touch too much innocence, and stood up too. "You know what isn't normal? Hanging by ourselves in a bathroom during the sports festival. We should be out there with everyone else."

Then Jeno had a hand around his wrist again, and was guiding him out of the bathroom and back across the festival grounds. Renjun barely had a chance to protest that he didn't care about the sports festival anyway. Jeno laughed and replied back, "I thought you wanted to be normal."

That was weird, Jeno laughing. Maybe it was Renjun’s current heightened perception that made him focus on it. The weirder part was how much Renjun liked the sound of it.

"Not that kind of normal," Renjun shouted back. It wasn't a good comeback, and Jeno laughed again.

Renjun considered cuffing Jeno in the head, but he wasn't sure he and Jeno were really friends yet, plus Jeno was an overpowered vampire, so he settled for glaring at Jeno's back. He definitely didn't let Jeno off easy because his laugh was making him feel disgustingly warm inside or anything like that.

They slipped back into the crowd of students, and Jeno let go of his wrist. They meandered between club booths selling everything from food to strangely well-made merchandise of training squadron members to potions of questionable origins (just kidding, Renjun knew the origins of those, though he'd rather not, one day Yuta would regret making him do all that unpaid labor).

Renjun considered buying Donghyuck a t-shirt with a gratuitous shot of Johnny's upper body. Donghyuck was way over that crush, which meant now was the best time to bring it up, when there was nothing left but pure cringe factor. It wasn't easy to embarrass Donghyuck, and even bringing up Johnny didn't always work, but Renjun did try. Then Renjun saw the prices. He wasn’t willing to try that hard.

"I didn't know you were into the training squadrons," Jeno said when he saw Renjun run a hand over the t-shirt, feeling the fabric. Unlike the others in their year, and most students on campus, Renjun didn't worship the ground the training squadrons walked on. "But you're into Johnny? Isn't he one of Donghyuck's friends? Isn't it weird to get a shirt of your friend's friend’s abs?"

"I'm not into the training squadrons, or Johnny. But someone was."

"It's okay to admit it if you were. He's cool, I guess," Jeno said. "The shirt is still ugly."

"Johnny is not cool," Renjun said, with a wordless apology to Johnny. Johnny wasn't uncool, objectively speaking, but Renjun had seen too much of him lazing around with Donghyuck to see him as cool. Plus he said dude too much, and ruffled their hair. "And the shirt is ugly. That's the point."

Jeno was confused, and Renjun didn't bother to explain.

Renjun didn't think too much about how he was walking through the sports festival with Jeno of all people, and how that was a sign more than any other that his life had turned head over heels. It did feel oddly...normal. And that was weird.

Renjun saw Yuta and the others packing up at the potions booth, and quickly pulled Jeno toward a different path through other booths.

"If Yuta catches me, he'll force me to help clean up. I wasn't exactly supposed to ditch them for the relay race," he said.

"Let me guess, Donghyuck?" Jeno said, and Renjun remembered that Jeno and Donghyuck had been partners for a while now. 

"The one and only," Renjun said.

Once out of Yuta's sight, they slowed down their pace, walking past other booths Renjun hadn't had a chance to see earlier. Above them, orbs of light hung on strings running parallel to the pathway, casting everyone's faces in gold. Different specks of color from vampire auras filtered into his vision, but he never lost sight of Jeno's.

"Where are we going?" Renjun asked.

"Wherever we want," Jeno said. "Like a normal festival." The light played against his hair, fairy lights against the dark strands.

Renjun wasn't the only one watching Jeno. He saw some of those who passed by turn their heads, gaze catching on him whether they noticed themselves doing it or not. It was hard not to, when the light glowed against his face, outlining the line of his nose and the curve of his lips. His eyes shone. Renjun slowed, tempted to walk a half-step behind, where he could blend in more easily with the crowd, and where he wasn't so close to Jeno’s festival light enhanced dazzling glow. His new eyesight was going to give him a headache. Jeno was oblivious and slowed with him, matching his pace. Renjun gave up the effort.

Renjun tore his gaze away from Jeno to take in the booths lining both sides of the pathway. He saw booths selling trinkets, that unpopular booth offering varieties of animal blood—he had to give them props for trying. "Be the change you want to see in the world. Animal blood is the future," cried one of the students at the booth, with forced cheer—and one booth with a lone figure professing to be a professional fortune teller.

Renjun stopped and did a double take. He made a 180 and strode over to the fortune telling booth, a smile spreading across his face. Jeno had to jog a couple steps to catch up.

"Wait, what—"

"Fancy seeing you here," Renjun said, putting his hands on the table and leaning toward the fortune teller. The fortune teller pulled his hood down over his head, but the purple cloak he was wearing wasn't enough to hide his face. "Since when did you do fortune telling, Mark?"

"Shh," Mark hissed, eyes darting from side to side. "I'm filling in for a friend."

Renjun jerked his head toward Jeno. "This is Jeno—"

"We've met," Jeno said. "At your Placements last year."

"Oh yeah, I remember you," Mark said. "The three vampire dudes. Good to see you again." He stood up holding out his hand, then seemed to remember he was in costume, and sat back down too fast. "I don't usually do this, I swear."

"Right," Renjun said, already pulling out his phone. He snapped a picture before Mark could block it with his hand.

"Hey," Mark said, but Renjun pulled back with a grin and slipped his phone back into his pocket. "Look, you can't tell anyone. I don't really believe in this stuff."

"Right," Renjun said.

"Renjun, come on, give me a break," Mark said.

Jeno looked between them. "Is something going on here? Is fortune telling bad?"

"It's fake," Mark said flatly. "99% of the time anyway. People who do it are either out to con you or delusional."

"Tell me my fortune Mark," Renjun said.

"I just said—"

"Please?"

Mark gestured at the sign that listed the rates. 3 dollars for one fortune, 5 for two, 20 for a ten minute session.

"You are trying to con me. Is there no friend discount?"

Mark shrugged. Renjun handed over three dollars. Mark screwed up his eyes, waited a total of five seconds, and said, "I predict that you'll delete that photo of me, or lose your phone in a mysterious disaster."

"Fortune telling is a lie after all," Renjun said mournfully. "I should have known." But he let Mark keep the three dollars.

They abandoned Mark and continued down the path. Renjun stared with longing at a booth advertising meat filled buns, but they were an exorbitant five dollars each, and Renjun had about a dollar and a half left in his wallet.

They settled down in the grass. Jeno sipped out of a bag he'd picked up at one of the booths and punctured with a straw.

"Is that blood?" Renjun asked.

"Uh, yeah?" Jeno said.

"You drink it out of a bag?" Renjun wrinkled his nose. Somehow the idea of blood lined up in little brown bags at a sports festival booth, sitting out for who knows how long—and Renjun did know they were kept cold, but that's not the point—in pristine straight lines, seemed more out of place than the idea of fangs sinking into the side of—

Okay, not going there.

"Not usually. But this isn’t bad," Jeno said. "They went for some fancier stuff today."

Renjun nodded along, pretending he knew what that meant. He leaned back in the grass.

"That night when the demon attacked us, do you wonder why he left us alive?"

Renjun twisted a blade of grass between his fingertips. "Yeah," he admitted. "Did I tell you he asked my name?"

"He did what?" Jeno sat up straighter. Renjun plucked at the grass, feeling uncomfortable under his sudden attention. It hadn't seemed like a big deal at the time. "Did you tell him?"

"I didn't really have a choice. It was like he forced it out of me."

Jeno leaned back again. "It probably means nothing," he said, though he wasn't as relaxed as before. "It's like Professor Kim and my parents said. Demons are capricious. The things they do don't always have a reason."

"Hey, there you are," someone shouted from a distance. They turned to see Donghyuck running up to them. He'd pulled a sweater over the running jersey but hadn't changed out of the shorts. Donghyuck plopped down beside them and glared at Renjun. "Where did you go? We got first, courtesy of me of course, and there I was waiting for my best friend to come join the celebration and congratulate me for pulling another great win out of my ass, and you weren't even there. And this year it doesn't even count because Mark Lee wasn't there—and he's always on relay, where is he anyway? So I couldn't rub it in anyone's face, _and_ I only beat a bunch of nobodies _and_ I feel unsupported and unloved by my very own roommate. At least Jaemin was there."

Renjun saw the other boy making his way over to them at a much less hurried pace, stopping every now and then to chat with other friends on the grass. He waved at them, and Renjun waved back.

"I ran for you, doesn't that count for something?" Renjun asked. "My stomach didn’t feel great after, so I went to the bathroom."

Donghyuck huffed, but his glare softened. He knew how much Renjun hated participating in the sports events. "Fine, we're even," he said, and flopped backward into the grass.

Jaemin eventually made his way over to them, and the four of them sat in the grass talking about nothing in particular. Renjun had never stayed this late at the sports festival before. He usually left right after the botany club's booth packed up. He surprised himself by wanting to stay a little longer.

Later, Jaemin and Jeno went to check out the booths again. Renjun didn't notice they’d come back until a hand nudged his shoulder. Jeno sat down beside him, holding out the meat bun he'd been eyeing earlier.

Renjun just looked at it, for too long because Jeno said a little cautiously, "You wanted this, right?"

"Yeah, but I can't pay you back right now."

"Don't worry about it."

The smell was heavenly. Maybe Renjun was feeling a little playful, lulled in by the talking and the smell of food, because he nudged Jeno in the side. "So you can be nice sometimes. Is this part of trying to be friends with me? Because giving me food is not going to get you anywhere."

“He’s lying,” Donghyuck said. “You should see what Renjun’s willing to do for free food—”

Donghyuck made an oof noise as Renjun jabbed him in the side. Jaemin laughed, and Jeno hid what looked suspiciously like a smile. Renjun narrowed his eyes at all of them.

Jeno put the bun in Renjun's hands. "Just eat it."

Renjun was easily placated by the food, because damn it Donghyuck was right. "Well, thanks,” he said. He bit into the bun. He wasn't sure if it was his hunger, but the bun tasted better than he remembered. A fluffy exterior, with a generous juicy filling of meat and vegetables.

With the taste of it on his tongue, his head against Donghyuck’s shoulder, his side against Jeno, and Jaemin telling some ridiculous story, he felt a gentle kind of warmth settle over him. He gazed at the blanket of stars dotting the sky overhead in that extra HD definition. For once, he thought maybe the sports festival wasn't so bad after all.

* * *

Jeno was nice when he wanted to be.

It threw Renjun off at first, the way Jeno would wave at him across campus and jog over so they could walk together.

And how Jeno would ask him how he was, even though it came with that secret undercurrent of did your eyes change color again?

And the way they started to talk to each other, not about demons or what their group was planning to do in the future, but just about normal, mundane life. Like what Renjun had for lunch. Or complaining about their workload. Or what they did over the weekend. Sometimes the past. Renjun learned how Jaemin and Jeno had been enemies at first as children when they constantly felt the need to one up each other on the school playground. Jaemin corroborated this story, but in his version, he'd always had the upper hand over Jeno and they became friends when Jaemin felt sorry for him. Renjun found out that Jeno used to have a pet cat but she ran away. Renjun talked about helping out at his mom's cafe, and how he'd met Donghyuck and Chenle.

Renjun was suspicious at first because he didn't think Jeno was that serious about wanting to patch things up between them. Getting along? Sure. But actually, really becoming friends? He didn't think so. He hadn't thought his accidental word-vomit about being half-human, or their encounter with the demon, would have had that kind of impact.

Jeno didn't seem to have witch friends. His relationships with witches were more along the lines of friendly acquaintances, or friends with benefits, blood bank type benefits. One or the other, not much gray area in between. After a couple months of being Jeno’s partner and Jeno consistently crashing at their apartment for schoolwork, Donghyuck was probably the closest Jeno had to a witch friend. Renjun wasn't sure how he felt about starting to fall into that category himself.

But when Jeno was nice it was easy for Renjun to slip and think of him as something like a friend.

And somewhere between the talking and how are yous and late night school projects when more people than Renjun had previously thought possible crashed on their couch, Renjun slipped further, crossing over that line dividing something like a friend from just a friend.

Not a close friend, necessarily. It wasn't like they went out of the way to hang out with each other. But still, a friend.

He wasn't sure Jeno felt the same way.

* * *

Renjun woke to the sound of murmured voices beyond his door. Anger simmered up again, and he padded over to the bathroom. He leaned close to the mirror until he saw the flecks of gold that floated in his brown irises. He'd noticed them a few days ago, but they'd probably been there all along.

Last night, Jeno had blown it open. He'd told them all, Jisung, Jaemin, Chenle, and Donghyuck, about Renjun's eyes going orange-yellow after the race, and what he thought it meant. He'd said it when Donghyuck and Chenle were arguing over whether Renjun should try to snag Kun's journal from Professor Koon. Donghyuck had been saying it had to be done, while Chenle argued that it was too dangerous. They both stopped cold when Jeno dropped the bomb.

"And that's why he shouldn't go after the journal, because he might not be stable right now," Jeno had finished.

When he finished, they were all staring at Renjun with wide eyes. They were ready to believe it wasn't true, and if he had been a better actor he could have played it off, but they saw his face and knew Jeno wasn't lying. The worst was seeing Donghyuck. His face transitioned in a heartbeat from disbelief to realization to betrayal. Renjun was going to tell him. He really was, but everything had been so good and normal, and he hadn't wanted to ruin it yet.

"What do you mean I'm not stable?" Renjun had spat. "It wasn't your secret to tell." Before Jeno could respond, Renjun made an escape to his room, slammed the door behind him, and threw himself on his bed.

"Um...I'm going to go," Renjun heard Jisung say. There was the sound of feet shuffling, good byes, and the door opening and closing. Voices continued to speak in the living room, but Renjun buried his face in his pillow, and they became muffled background noise. He fell asleep like that.

Now, half-awake, Renjun crept over to the door closing off the living room from the hall. He heard Donghyuck's voice. "Okay, so one of us can get the journal instead."

"I still don't think it's a good idea. Breaking and entering a professor's office seems a little extreme." Chenle.

"I can do it." Jeno. He hadn't left?

"No, that doesn't make sense. I should do it because at least I'm a witch and can make up some excuse for being there—"

Renjun threw open the door. "I'll do it," he said.

"Renjun," Donghyuck said, a bad attempt at sounding casual. "You're awake."

"I'll get the journal. It makes the most sense. I'm in her class."

"Whoa, we shouldn't rush into anything. We were thinking that—"

"That what? I'm not _stable_?" Jeno almost flinched, and Renjun smiled viciously. "I'm fine. Nothing's happened since then and it's been weeks."

"No one said you're not fine," Donghyuck said, probably in what he thought was a soothing tone, but the fact that even Donghyuck was trying to soothe him made Renjun's hackles rise. "We were thinking..."

Donghyuck's voice trailed off when Renjun walked over to their front door and started shoving his boots on.

"Where are you going?" Chenle asked, his voice small.

"Somewhere where my friends don't talk behind my back when I'm sleeping," Renjun said.

"Renjun—"

"I'm just going to class." He flashed them his most vicious smile, and left.

* * *

Getting into Professor Koon's office was easy. It wasn't her official office in the advanced magic building on campus. Renjun didn't think she would keep it there. She wasn't there often, and the official office had a starched quality, as if it'd never been touched by personality. This office was her room in the hut, at the very back. She spent more time here, but not that much, since she was often out in the main room or helping one of the students.

Maybe Renjun should have told one of the others he was going to go for it, or maybe even YangYang, but YangYang didn't know about Doyoung and Renjun wasn't ready to talk to the others yet.

The door wasn't locked, so Renjun opened it slowly. He had an excuse prepared in case Professor Koon was inside, but no one was there. He scanned the room. Unlike the main room, her office was organized, with stacks of manila folders and boxes sorted by some kind of system. Little labels were taped to the sides of different boxes.

Renjun took a cautious step into the room. He kept expecting an alarm to go off, or some other kind of blaring reminder that he wasn't supposed to be there, but nothing happened.

When it didn't seem like anything would jump out at him, he crossed to the desk in the middle in quick, light steps. He'd become good at walking soundlessly, courtesy of the new lightness of his body. He kept expecting it to wear off, because parts of it were. There were a couple fewer specks of gold in his eyes, and the feeling of energies around him wasn’t as overwhelming. For now though, since it hadn’t worn off yet, he’d taken full advantage to sneak up behind Donghyuck and scare the hell out of him multiple times. The thought of Donghyuck soured Renjun's mood. It reminded him why he was here, to prove to them that he was fine on his own.

Better than fine. Aside from what had happened with Jae, the changes were all...good. He could use magic without a catch, his senses were sharper, and even physically he felt faster, lighter. He felt a little guilty thinking that he could get used to it. Maybe that was why people summoned demons to begin with. Maybe they made you a better version of yourself, that you'd never be otherwise. Cheating on steroids.

Renjun started to pull open the drawers under Koon's desk. None of them were locked. He had to do this fast. He could have an excuse for lingering in her office, but not for looking through her desk. He felt another pang of guilt. Professor Koon had seen potential in him when none of the other professors had, and here he was betraying her trust. He at least tried not to look too closely at her personal items as he rifled through the drawers.

Most of the drawers were filled with papers and gadgets he hadn't seen before. He saw photos of a much younger Professor Koon, along with others who might have been friends or colleagues, and resisted the urge to take a closer look at those. He pulled open the last drawer at the top of the desk, feeling some relief that he hadn't found anything. He'd have to try again later, but for today he wouldn't be stealing from his favorite professor.

Then his eye caught on a label in the back. He wasn't sure why it caught his eye. It was attached to one of four nondescript boxes, each with a small figure of a cupid with a bow on top. The label read, _Memories_.

Without meaning to, he found himself in front of the box, and sliding off the heavy lid. A brown journal lay on top of a bed of photographs. Renjun flipped through the journal, thinking, _this couldn't be it. It couldn't be that easy._ It read like a diary. It was likely someone from a training squadron, because most of the entries included a, _Today my partner and I,_ along with many notations of, _he's insufferable. Why do I put up with this?_ Renjun flipped through page after page, still unsure whose journal it was, until he reached a page where the entries came to an abrupt halt.

The last one had two coordinates, a longitude and a latitude, and underneath it were the words, _I still have more questions than answers, but this is a start - Kun._

Renjun closed the journal and started to lift it from the box. He hesitated midway. Even though he'd said he was going to do it, he didn't want Koon to get in trouble for losing the journal. And the journal's absence would definitely be noted. All the crafts students would be prime suspects, even if he didn't get caught now. He couldn't promise he wouldn't crack and confess if Koon confronted him.

Then Renjun's eye caught on one of the photographs beneath the journal. The journal slipped out of his hand. He ran a trembling finger over the photograph. It was a group photo, the colors faded by time, of students clumped together in front of the academy gates with arms over each other’s shoulders. The caption read, _Graduated at last. Couldn’t have asked for a better group of friends. You all better not forget about me!_

In the photo, Renjun saw a much younger Professor Koon, smiling so wide at the camera that his cheeks hurt looking at it. Her arm was slung around another young woman, and a male with the pale skin and amber eyes of a vampire was draped over them both, also cheesing at the camera. The young woman had her arms crossed, and was wearing a long-suffering but undeniably fond expression. It was his mother.

Renjun lifted the photo out of the box.

Three twangs disrupted the quiet of the room, one after the other. It was only Renjun's new heightened reflexes that kept the arrows from stabbing him in the face. He ducked to the side in time to avoid getting his eye taken out, but not fast enough. Pain blossomed in his shoulder as the miniature arrows sliced through cloth and then flesh. He saw that the three cupid figurines on the tops of the other boxes had turned in his direction. Their bows were now empty.

Renjun scrambled to his feet. He stuffed the photo in his pocket, put the lid back on the box, and ran.

With blood streaming down the three parallel gashes on his shoulder, Renjun sprinted out of Koon's office and out of the hut. He supposed he should have counted himself lucky not to run into Koon or any of the other students, but his heart was hammering too fast in his chest to feel anything but a desperate need to get out of there, and get out of there fast.

He was empty-handed but for the coordinates in his head and the photo burning a hole in his pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another chapter mainly about the sports festival because i can't help myself  
> i keep telling myself not to make this even longer by adding filler scenes but my self-control is like...not great. like did they need to run into mark no not at all but hahaha oh well
> 
> also i haven't been able to get to the comments on the last chapter yet, sorryyy, but i'll try to respond to things over the week


	24. a little lost

Renjun didn't know where he was going. The garden in front of the hut felt like it did the first day, foreign and ravenous, somewhere he could lose himself. But his body knew the way out, and he made it out down to the path without a pause.

The sun had set some time ago, the last rays of light disappearing beyond the horizon and leaving behind a dull gray. He walked down the path, back onto campus. He didn't know where he wanted to go, but he kept moving. That was the one directive he could obey—keep moving.

His mother had known Koon?

Something curled in his chest, coiling under his ribcage, and it wasn't his magic. It was not sharp enough to be called betrayal.

Hadn't his mother been the one who always said to stay away from vampires? Since when had she had vampire friends? And if she'd known Koon, why had she been so angry when she found out he was in mixed class? Renjun told himself to be rational. The photo was clearly from a long time ago, and if he forced himself to remember the phone call, if he really forced himself, he knew his mother hadn't even known who was teaching the class. Would it have made a difference if she had?

He wasn't sure even what made him feel this way. He could write it off as the connection between Koon, and his mother, and the others in the photo he'd never known about. But that wasn't really it. What it was, really, was that the person in the photo was someone he didn't know.

He was somewhere on campus now. He heard a familiar voice, and maybe he needed familiarity, because he almost ran over when he saw Chenle standing by the side of one of the buildings. His steps came to a halt when he saw Chenle was with someone else.

"I don't know why you're so hellbent on following me around all of a sudden," Chenle said.

"I don't know why you're so hellbent on avoiding me," the other person said. Renjun saw that it was Jisung.

"I'm not hellbent on avoiding you. When did I avoid you? I just—I don't have the energy for this constant surveillance."

"It's not...surveillance. I just want to hang out, like the good old times."

Chenle laughed then, high-pitched and acerbic. The sound was that of a stranger’s and it sent Renjun reeling away, backing up until he felt brick wall by his side.

Then he turned and left. It didn't seem like a conversation he was supposed to overhear, and he didn't want to hear that laugh again. He kept walking, his head down, the wind whistling in his ears. It was good that it was so loud because it drowned out his thoughts.

His feet took him to the edge of campus, back to the path toward home. Muscle memory working even when his mind wasn't. He stopped. He didn't know if he wanted to go home.

His hand slipped into his pocket and touched the edge of the photo, but he couldn't bring himself to take it out. So he just stood there, one hand in his pocket, as the pale light of the streetlamp switched on above him.

"Hey, Renjun?" Renjun looked up from the ground to see Jaemin and Jeno standing across the street from him. Jeno winced when they made eye contact, though Jaemin didn't seem to notice. Presumably they were on their way back to campus. Maybe they'd hung out with Donghyuck after mixed class. Maybe they'd had a little chat about Renjun’s condition.

Jaemin waved, and Renjun forced himself to give a cursory wave back. He offered a weak parody of a smile, hoping that from a distance it'd be convincing, one of those nice to see you but I got to go smiles, and that it would be enough to convince Jaemin and Jeno to continue on their way to wherever they'd been going.

It wasn't ever that easy. Jaemin smiled back, and started to cross the street. Renjun cursed himself. Of course Jaemin would take a smile as an invitation. Even Jeno made a cautious attempt at a smile as he followed a short distance behind Jaemin, but Renjun didn’t care to reciprocate, and the smile slid from Jeno’s face. Jeno’s eyes were lowered to the ground and stayed there, as if the asphalt was infinitely more interesting than Renjun. That suited Renjun just fine.

When they got closer, Jaemin's smile faded. "You okay?" he asked. Jaemin was the worst possible person he could've run into right now. Too observant, even in the streetlamp light. Renjun should have walked off when he had the chance. "You don’t look great."

"Long day," Renjun said, in his best rendition of a I don't want to talk right now voice. It wasn’t hard.

Jaemin nodded slowly. He glanced back at Jeno, who couldn't help looking up from the ground, even with its very interesting cracks on the sidewalk. Jeno’s eyes met Renjun's eyes by accident, and widened. This time Renjun's eyes slid away. He couldn't face both their concern, not right now, when he was trying not to care too much about anything. Jaemin put a hand on Renjun's shoulder. There was a hesitancy in his touch, not his usual playful forwardness. "Is this about what Jeno said before? Because both Jeno and I want you to know that doesn't have to change anything."

"It's not about that," Renjun said.

"Okay," Jaemin said. "Still."

He squeezed Renjun's shoulder before letting go. "We'll see you around," he said.

"Yeah," Renjun said, already starting to turn back toward the path home.

"Wait," Jeno said. Renjun turned back. The streetlight reflected oddly off Jeno's face, making his cheeks seem more hollow. Jeno’s eyes widened again, like he hadn't expected to speak.

Renjun waited.

Jaemin glanced between them, and seemed to come to some decision. "I'll catch you in class, Jeno," he said, with a light touch on Jeno's shoulder. Jeno's mouth opened halfway as Jaemin left, as if he wanted to call him back, but he didn't.

"Can we—can we talk?" Jeno asked.

"We are now, aren't we?" Renjun said.

"Right." Jeno scuffed his foot against the ground. He looked up at Renjun, then back down at the ground. When he spoke, it was to a crack in the sidewalk. "I'm sorry about telling everyone," he breathed out in a rush. "I should have asked you first."

Renjun was quiet for a moment. Then, he said, "It's fine.”

Jeno looked up again, confused. "Really? You're not mad?"

The anger from before felt dull now, impotent, buried underneath the unfamiliar night. "It's not important now. I'm not happy about it, but it's whatever. I would have had to tell Donghyuck anyway, and probably Chenle too."

"It's...not important," Jeno repeated slowly. He was looking at Renjun too close. Even if he wasn't as observant as Jaemin, Renjun was tempted to step back and obscure his face in the shadows, before he remembered that it wouldn't work on vampires.

But when Jeno's eyes scanned down to his hand in his pocket, he stepped back anyway.

"I should go," Renjun said, if only to cover it up. He took a step back, then another, and when Jeno didn't stop him or demand to know why his hand was still in his pocket, he started to walk away.

"That isn't the direction to your apartment," Jeno said.

Renjun stopped again, even though he shouldn't have.

"I don't want to go home. Not yet," he said, which didn't make sense to tell Jeno. Maybe he just wanted to say it to someone, and Jeno happened to be here.

"Where are you going?" Jeno asked.

"I don't know. Somewhere," Renjun said. Codespeak for walking aimlessly around the neighborhood until the streets became familiar again. Until he no longer felt lost.

"Want to come over to my place then?" Jeno offered.

"Don't you have class?"

"Not until later. I was going to go back and take a nap anyway. You can come if you want."

Jeno sounded worried, so Renjun knew he must have looked like a mess. He wanted to laugh that Jeno was worried about him, because what was that if not a final touch of madness for the night, but he was afraid it'd come out like Chenle's laugh. Something strange and unfamiliar.

It was a bad idea. His mother's voice said, "Don't trust the vampires" in the back of his head. But she'd had vampire friends. He wanted to laugh again. "Okay," Renjun said.

* * *

Jeno's apartment was how he remembered it. Too large, with an unnecessarily decked out kitchen. Renjun sat on the couch. Jeno placed a cup of water in front of him.

Renjun observed how the wood of the table distorted through the glass of water.

"Because Jaemin said I was a bad host last time," Jeno said.

Renjun didn't remember what he was talking about, but he nodded. Now that it was just the two of them, he was more certain this had been a bad idea. It was like he'd forgotten what had happened last time. Now that he’d walked through the door, his neck felt too exposed.

Now that it was just the two of them, he couldn't ignore Jeno if he tried. Jeno's aura around them radiated power, and he wanted it. He wanted to get closer to it, more than ever.

"I'll be in my room," Jeno said, pointing to one of the doors. It had a couple photos of cats taped to the front, and Renjun wondered idly if vampires had pets. Renjun hadn't seen any around in Asomateus, except for human pets, if that counted. "If you need anything, just knock."

"Okay," Renjun said, still staring at the glass of water.

But when Jeno made it out of the living room into the hall, the large living room felt suddenly too empty. Just Renjun and this glass of water and the photo he for some reason both needed desperately to look at again and just as desperately needed to keep inside his pocket. The emptiness would swallow him whole.

"Jeno," he said. "Don't leave." It was an accident, and so quiet he thought even Jeno might not hear him. The vampire stopped.

He turned back. "Sorry? Did you say something?" From here Renjun could see exhaustion in the line of his shoulders, the way his eyes drooped.

"No, it's nothing. Sorry," Renjun said. He turned back to the glass of water. It didn't make any sense that a photo would unhinge him like this. It wasn't anything bad. A piece of history, and past friendship.

But maybe he'd been lost for a while, just without knowing it, and the photo had been what threw it all into perspective. It reminded him how little he knew, throwing him back to years ago when he’d first come to the academy and been a lost first year. Over three years later and he still hadn’t found his bearings.

The space beside him sank in as Jeno sat down.

"Is something wrong?" Jeno asked.

Renjun could have laughed. "Something's always wrong, with demons and magic and vampires that can't keep a secret," he said, but he lacked the venom to make the words sting. "What's one more thing on top of that?"

"One more thing?" Jeno said.

"Do you ever feel like you don't know who someone is anymore?"

"Yeah, sometimes."

Renjun shot a surprised glance at Jeno, who returned his gaze steadily. They were sitting too close, Renjun realized, but he didn't mind it. Rather, he had an uncomfortable itch under his skin to move closer.

"About who?" Renjun demanded.

"Recently, you," Jeno said.

"Me? Is this because of the half-human thing? Because I thought we went over that."

"I mean there's that, but you're confusing. Sometimes you act like you want me to bite you, and sometimes you act like you hate it."

Renjun was almost disappointed. Of course what Jeno cared about most was whether or not Renjun wanted to let him suck his blood. Typical vampire behavior.

"You're not much better," Renjun quipped. "Acting like you want to be friends when you just want my blood."

Jeno frowned. "I don't just want your blood. I do want to be friends."

"You don't have witch friends. Except maybe Donghyuck now," Renjun pointed out.

Jeno exhaled through his nose, but he didn't deny it. "Maybe I thought that should change."

"And you never wanted to change that before? Seems like you had a lot of years to change your mind."

Jeno's gaze didn't waver, but some emotion Renjun couldn't recognize flashed across his face, almost anger, but dulled down, distilled to tastelessness. "You don't get it. It's not that simple."

"Then explain it to me."

"When you're from a family like mine, or Jaemin's, you get used to people approaching you because you've got something they want. Witches especially now, because I'm pretty much guaranteed entry into a training squadron."

"Confident, aren't you?" More of that not-anger flashed across Jeno's face, and Renjun bit his tongue. "Sorry, you've got a right to be. Go on."

"It's not confidence," Jeno said, turning away. "It's not even me. It's my family, okay? They'd pull all the strings to make sure I got in even if I didn't have a right to."

Renjun didn't notice he'd lifted a hand until he used it to brush the bangs from Jeno's eyes. Jeno startled at the touch. "Why do you try so hard in class then? If your family would get you in anyway?"

One of Jeno's hands balled into a fist at his side. "Because I want to get in because I deserve it, not because of my family, not because of anyone else."

Renjun's hand slid down Jeno's face, not sure why he was touching Jeno or why Jeno didn't stop him. Maybe he thought the touch would comfort Jeno, and he tried not to think why he would want to comfort Jeno. It seemed to work though, because Jeno's fist slowly uncurled, the fingers working loose one by one.

"That's why it's hard for me to trust—anyone, really, but especially witches. With vampires I know the politics so I know who's on my side and who isn't. The witches that come to me don't even like me."

Renjun thought of Jeno's unofficial fan club. "I'm pretty sure a lot of witches like you."

"No, they don't like _me_. They don't even know me. They just like what I could give them. It's always been that way."

Renjun lifted his hand from Jeno's face, feeling suddenly too close for comfort though the space between them hadn't changed. Jeno caught his hand before he could withdraw it to his side.

Renjun tried to brush off the uncomfortable closeness with his words, light and careless. "But you're the same, right? You don't want to know them; you don't let them know you. I'm pretty sure the pretty witch from mixed class liked you, and wanted to know you better, but you wouldn't let him. I'm pretty sure he's not the first one."

Jeno's nostrils flared, and he breathed in and out for a beat. His grip on Renjun's hand got a little painful. "Maybe you're right," Jeno said finally, too much of a concession for Renjun's comfort. "But I got used to people who were just out to use me. And I thought if they were going to get something from me, I might as well get something back."

"Okay, I get it," Renjun said. "I mean, I don’t get it, but that does..suck. But I don’t think you need to cut everyone off. Donghyuck’s a safe bet, I guess." Donghyuck fit the paradigm—he was overpowered enough himself that he didn't need anything from Jeno.

Jeno still hadn't let go of Renjun's hand. He seemed to have forgotten he was holding it, and Renjun was tempted to wriggle it out of his grasp. “Yeah, I know, but even he wants a good partner. Sometimes it’s like they all want something from me," Jeno said. "Except you."

There was something intangibly bare in the air between them. Friendship, huh? This was too many steps past their friend-like acquaintanceship, their acquaintance-like friendship, closer to vulnerability. Too many threads laid bare, and if Renjun wasn't careful, he'd get entangled in them, and he wouldn't make it out alive.

Friendship, huh?

Instead, Renjun said, "You're wrong."

Like that, the moment was over. Jeno's expression shuttered momentarily. Renjun let himself feel relief, and blocked out any feeling that he'd let something important pass him by.

“I do want something from you,” Renjun said. Renjun tilted his head back, exposing his throat.

Jeno stared dumbly at him.

"I thought you didn't want this," Jeno said, but his eyes gravitated toward Renjun's jugular.

"Maybe I thought that should change."

It was reckless, but reckless was better than vulnerable. Better the type of closeness where he knew the rules and the playing field. And in the end, maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe all it came down to was this: he did want it.

"You're not going to avoid me after this, right?" Jeno said uncertainly.

Renjun jerked his chin back up. "No, I'm not. I'm asking you to do this." He fisted his hand in Jeno's shirt, and pulled him closer. "Stop acting like you've never done this before. What are you waiting for?"

Jeno's eyes flashed, and he leaned in so close their noses almost touched. "Don't try to provoke me," he said.

"I can't help it if you're so damn slow about it. This offer isn't going to last forever, so—"

Jeno ran a hand under the back of Renjun's head, leaned forward, and sank his teeth into Renjun's neck.

Renjun felt two sharp dots of pain, before a wave of hot pulsing pleasure washed over him, coursing through his veins. He leaned back with an involuntary shudder, his own hand coming up to hold Jeno's head in place. It felt good, so, so good.

And if he felt like he was falling, if he felt like he was losing a part of himself, he didn't care. He didn't care, just let his blood sing in his veins, and let himself feel Jeno's teeth in his neck and Jeno's lips against his throat. He let himself feel it, let himself really feel it for the first time, until he couldn't think.

He was making some kind of sound that he would have been embarrassed of if he cared enough to pay attention to it.

His hand tightened in Jeno's hair.

Then Jeno was pulling back up away from him, gently removing Renjun's hand. Renjun was reaching for him. Flailing stupidly, trying to draw him back. "You're not done already?" he was saying, and his voice sounded distinctly whiny.

"You don't want to lose more blood than that," Jeno said, low and breathy. His face was flushed from the blood, and he was smiling down at Renjun, and damn it if that wasn't the most beautiful sight Renjun had seen in his short life. He was willing to admit that for at least a couple more seconds.

Renjun tried again to draw Jeno back, and this time without thinking, he used his magic too. A part of him coming back to his senses cringed—he wasn't that desperate—but it was a small part and it didn't manage to convince the rest of him. His magic unfurled around them, and when it touched Jeno's energy, the amount of power he felt there terrified him. He pulled back, but a hint of Jeno's energy drained into him on contact, a hot jolt that almost stung. Jeno must have felt it too because his eyes widened. Renjun's vision went into vivid saturation, the room thrown into overbright light and overdark shadow. Red and silver mist materialized around Jeno.

Jeno shivered. "That, what was that?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know how that happened. I think I got some of your energy?" Renjun said. "Did it hurt you?"

Jeno shook his head. "I wouldn't say it hurt. It felt—" he looked vaguely uncomfortable, almost embarrassed. "—well, it didn't hurt."

At least it woke Renjun from whatever post-blood-giving stupor he'd been in, but it reminded him unpleasantly of the demon, which reminded him of Kun's journal and the photo in his pocket. He propped himself up on his elbows.

"You have blood on your lip," he said. Jeno wiped at it with the back of his hand, while Renjun blinked until his vision returned to normal. It didn't take too long this time.

Renjun gathered up his bag, and his hoodie.

"You're leaving?" Jeno asked.

"Do you usually let people stay after this?" Renjun said, waving a finger at his neck.

"Well, no, but I thought you didn't want to go home."

"I'm feeling a lot better now. Thanks."

Renjun remembered thinking before that Jeno didn't have witch friends. That Jeno's relationships with witches fell into one of two categories: friendly acquaintances, or friends with blood bank type benefits.

He knew which one he was now.

He thought he might as well enjoy it while he could. "That was really good," Renjun said, much like that witch he'd seen with Jeno a long time ago at some dingy spot on campus. Jeno liked that kind of stuff, right? "We should do it again some time." His voice sounded far away to his own ears.

* * *

That night, Renjun had the slow dream, but he didn't want it to be slow, so he ran. He ran to the side of the lake, knelt at the edge, and looked down.

"Hello," his reflection said. "You look like you've had some fun."

Renjun clapped a hand over the bite mark on his neck, not sure why it didn't disappear in the dream. This wasn't what he was here for. Not that he was here by choice, but if he had to be here, if this dream meant anything, he might as well use it.

"I don't understand what's going on. Who are you?" Renjun demanded. He didn't whisper this time.

"You're still not asking the right questions," his reflection said, shaking his head in disappointment. "Here, I'll help you out. The real question is, who are you?"

* * *

Chenle and Renjun laid in the grass under the trees. Chenle tossed a red rubber ball in the air while Renjun tried unsuccessfully to knock it off course with a dart of wind the size of a needle. The only sign that he was doing anything at all was a small rustle in a tree leaf above where his wind actually hit.

The ball curved up and went back down, landing with a smack in Chenle's hand. A leaf above rustled.

"I was going to try to put this nicely, but your aim sucks," Chenle said.

When Chenle next tossed the ball up, Renjun sent a gust of wind that knocked it off somewhere into the trees.

"Hey!" Chenle said, though neither of them bothered to get up from the ground. The residual heat of the day lingered in the grass, and it felt warm against Renjun's back. "You're getting that," Chenle said.

"Make me," Renjun said. Neither of them moved.

"Can't we get back to what you're supposed to be doing?" Jisung said from where he stood by a tree trunk next to them. He fidgeted often, Renjun had noticed, shifting every now and then from foot to foot.

"No, I'm still tired," Chenle said, though Renjun suspected he wasn't. Renjun suspected he hadn't been tired when they called a break.

"You've just been lying around for the past 20 minutes!" Jisung said. Jisung was right. They should have gotten back to practicing a while ago.

"If you don't like it, you are free to leave," Chenle said, knowing full well that Jisung wasn't going to. Jisung had been following Chenle around for the past couple weeks or so, popping up randomly in between classes or during Chenle and Renjun's practices for mixed class. Chenle had shrugged it off at first, and when Renjun asked about it, he'd just shaken his head and said, "Who knows what he's thinking?" But when it didn't stop, it started to wear down on Chenle's nerves.

Which was why today, Chenle had snapped, "If you're going to hang around, you might as well be useful and help us out."

They hadn't thought Jisung would take him up on it, but he had. So before their break, they'd been running around the clearing with Jisung lobbing the red rubber ball at the Chenle, and Renjun trying to block it by pulling up transient defensive barriers that weren't supposed to be any larger than the ball itself. It had worked out about as well as Renjun could expect, which was to say Renjun's barriers came up too late or out of the path of the ball, and he was only 60% sure they met the size specification. He tripped up Jisung or Chenle more often than he blocked any hits. Jisung and Chenle mostly ended up playing dodgeball among themselves.

Renjun reasoned that it wasn't entirely his fault. Chenle and Jisung moved too fast, and he was distracted half the time by trying not to let his magic absorb even a hint of anyone's energy. Though, mainly, he did have bad aim.

The three of them had collapsed laughing on the grass after about half an hour of little success. For a short-lived moment, Chenle hadn’t seemed to mind Jisung’s presence.

By now his irritation had come back in full. "Or if you don’t want to leave, you can go fetch the ball," Chenle said.

"If I get the ball, can we get started again?"

"Sure, sure," Chenle said.

Jisung turned and bounded off into the trees, and Chenle sat up in the grass with a start. "I didn't think he'd actually go," Chenle said.

"Don't you think you should be a little nicer to him?" Renjun said.

Chenle glared at him. "I don't tell you how to behave."

Renjun raised his hands. "I'm just saying if you're nicer, he'd probably stop bothering you sooner."

Chenle plucked a sprig of grass and tossed it at Renjun's face. Renjun tried to bat it away, but missed, and it landed on his nose. "Maybe," he conceded, and laid back down in the grass.

They could hear Jisung tromping around in the bushes some distance away.

"When are you going to tell me how that happened?" Chenle asked.

Renjun’s hand flew up to cover his neck with a sense of deja vu. "Is it that obvious?" It was, and he knew it. It was on a part of his neck he couldn't hide, and it was too warm for turtlenecks and scarves—that'd only make it more obvious he was trying to cover something up.

"Right, like you weren't trying so hard to pretend you didn't notice everyone talking about it."

Renjun flushed. Even if he hadn't noticed that, he would've noticed Jaemin lift an eyebrow and smirk when he saw it the day before. "I didn't know people cared that much about this. I thought it was kind of normal?"

"It is, but people still care about who bit who. And it's you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You've never been spotted with so much as a mark on your neck, and you come into class with a full bite. A really obvious one too. Can you blame people for wanting to know how that happened?"

Renjun groaned.

"So who did it?"

Renjun rolled onto his stomach. "Jeno," he said, his voice muffled in the grass.

"Jeno?" Chenle's eyes bulged out. "Wait, wait, wait, what? You're playing with fire, Renjun. Jeno's got good senses. What if he notices you're half-human?"

"He already knows."

"He knows?" Chenle screeched.

"Quiet down," Renjun said, with a jerk of his head in Jisung's direction.

"I really hope you know what you're doing. Jeno's okay with you and Donghyuck as far as I can tell, but he doesn't really, I don't know, like witches or humans all that much."

"I know. It was just a one time thing," Renjun said.

* * *

It wasn't a one time thing, but Renjun wasn't counting.

The second time it happened wasn't preordained. It was just a brush of Renjun's fingers against Jeno's shoulder because he couldn't help himself. A couple steps past that, and Jeno's hand was on his wrist, pulling him into an empty classroom, and clicking the door shut behind them. Pressing himself against Renjun and leaning his head in the hollow of Renjun's shoulder, nosing against Renjun's neck. Renjun could smell a touch of pine from his shampoo.

Renjun’s hand curled in Jeno’s hair. He almost dug his fingers in, eager to guide Jeno’s head to the same place he'd bitten before, before he remembered not to.

"This time," he said, a little breathlessly. "Not somewhere people can see." He used a finger to tug down the collar of his shirt, exposing the upper half of his shoulder and half his collarbone.

When Jeno didn't stop nosing at his neck, Renjun slid a hand between Jeno's face and his neck.

Jeno made a low whine in the back of his throat. "Why?"

"I don't want everyone to see."

"What's wrong with people seeing?"

If Renjun didn't want this so much, he'd shove Jeno. "You don't get to complain when I have a huge ass bite mark on my neck and no one can even tell that you've done anything."

"So it's fine if you can mark me? I might be okay with that..."

Renjun jerked back from him, flustered. "No, what the hell," Renjun said. "Just bite where the shirt can cover."

Jeno hummed, and acquiesced.

After that, it was easy to pull Jeno over, or get pulled over into an empty classroom, or an alcove by the lockers, or a nook under the staircase. Jeno wasn't as careful about it, but Renjun made sure no one was around before he let Jeno sink his teeth in. Renjun forced himself to space it out by at least a couple days. Sometimes it was hard to wait long enough to be careful. Sometimes he absorbed a bit of Jeno's energy during the bite, and Jeno would shiver against him.

Renjun even wound up at Asomateus a couple times when Jaemin wasn't around. With his odd collection of clubs, Jaemin was out of their apartment often.

Renjun tried not to think what it'd be like when this was over, and Jeno moved on, as he always did, to the next witch.

Renjun had chosen this, after all. Better to have fun and forget than get burned for getting too close.

* * *

Jeno leaned in and his breath feathered against Renjun's ear. "Hey, um, Jaemin's not going to be home tonight," Jeno said. "If you want to come hang out."

Jeno fiddled at a string of Renjun's hoodie, and Renjun lightly slapped his hand away.

"I'm busy tonight," Renjun said.

Jeno leaned back and tilted his head. "With what?" he said, a little too loudly.

A body collided with Renjun's, shoulder knocking against his, and then Donghyuck was slinging an arm around Renjun's shoulders. Jeno stared reproachfully at Donghyuck's arm.

"We've got witch business tonight," Donghyuck said, and winked.

"What witch business?" Jaemin asked, walking up to them.

"Dark, terrifying magic, the likes of which you've never seen before," Donghyuck said. "Renjun's nervous."

"I'm not nervous," Renjun snapped. "And it's nothing like that. _I've_ got nothing to be nervous about. You, on the other hand..."

"They're going for familiars," Chenle said, coming over with a yawn.

"Way to spoil the surprise," Donghyuck said, sticking his tongue out at Chenle.

"You didn't mention that," Jeno said to Renjun. He had that oddly reproachful look still, and kept eyeing Donghyuck's arm around Renjun's shoulder.

"It's not a big deal," Renjun said. "It's not like that many witches get familiars anyway."

"Not a big deal? You're the one who's been jealous of Yuta's falcon since second year—"

Donghyuck's words choked off as Renjun shoved his hand over Donghyuck's mouth. "When the hell have I ever been jealous of Yuta?" Renjun said. Donghyuck made muffled noises behind his hand that sounded suspiciously like, "When have you not?"

When Donghyuck finally got free of Renjun's hand over his mouth, he put a hand over his heart and lifted his eyes to the sky.

"I'm too young and beautiful to die," he said, as Renjun dragged him away from the rest of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> any bets on if renjun gets a familiar or not?  
> could be a coin toss really


	25. familiar or not

YangYang waved at Renjun and Donghyuck as they made their way over to him. Other fourth year witches milled about. Renjun could feel the tension rolling off them. Chatter would flare and die, more small outbursts of nerves than real talk. Renjun would have written off their nerves—very few of them would get familiars anyway, so what was the point of being nervous—if he didn't feel the same way. In the midst of them, YangYang seemed unbothered. He was chewing on something, and observing the space with curious eyes.

"It feels like this is everyone in the class," YangYang said.

"It probably is," Donghyuck said. "It's optional, but no one's going to miss the opportunity to get a familiar."

"At my old school you couldn't even try unless you were qualified," YangYang said.

"How do you qualify?" Renjun asked.

YangYang shrugged. "Some kind of test. I don't know the details. I could ask my friends though."

It took Renjun some time to process that YangYang was talking about friends at his old school. He was so bright most of the time that Renjun forgot that he'd had a place before this one, and friends he'd left behind to come here.

"But," YangYang lowered his voice, "One of them didn't qualify so it's kind of a sensitive topic and I can't bring it up in the group chat. He'd be so mad if he knew everyone here got to try."

"I guess our school's all about equal opportunity," Donghyuck said with a laugh. Until then, Renjun had thought Donghyuck was as unruffled as YangYang, but his laugh was a giveaway, a touch sharper than usual. Renjun squeezed Donghyuck's shoulder.

Several professors were standing around the space, some of them talking to each other while others checked the perimeter. Renjun and YangYang saw Professor Koon. YangYang waved before Renjun could stop him, and she came over to them. Renjun couldn't look Professor Koon in the eye without thinking of the photo he'd taken. She must know about it by now, if the cupids that had shot their arrows weren't already a dead giveaway. Dread curled in his stomach every time he went to class, waiting for the other foot to fall. Dread that curled in his stomach now, mixing with the nerves, a fantastic combination before the ritual. The anticipation was almost worse than confrontation. He almost wished she would say something about it.

"Good luck to both of you," she said. Renjun searched her voice for any hint of insincerity, but she sounded the same as always. More supportive, if anything. Then she frowned, and Renjun was sure this was it. She’d figured out he was a lying thief, and he was screwed.

"YangYang, spit that gum out," Professor Koon said. "And don't bring your personal effects into the ritual."

"Aw man," YangYang said, with some disappointment and zero guilt. He headed over to a nearby trash can that the professors had set up for some reason, though Renjun couldn't think of a student besides YangYang who'd bring in anything resembling food or drink. Renjun thought he saw two small insect-like shapes crawl down YangYang's legs and disappear into a patch of grass at the side.

"Any advice?" Donghyuck asked Professor Koon.

"Follow what your heart says is right, not what your mind thinks is best," she said.

Donghyuck scratched his head after she left. "What do you think that means?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Renjun said.

YangYang came back to them, now gum and automaton free.

"I can't believe you brought in gum," Donghyuck said. "You're too relaxed."

YangYang shrugged. "I can't change if I'm going to get a familiar or not. No point in stressing about it."

When the ritual began, the half-full moon hung high in the sky above them. They lined up in single file. A circle had been marked out in white on the ground in front of the line.

The girl at the head of the line took a deep breath and stepped into the circle. The circle lit up, surrounding the girl with a pale white glow. Her hair floated up around her. A minute passed, but nothing else happened. The light extinguished itself. A professor waved a hand and the girl walked out of the circle, her shoulders slumped.

One after another they walked into the circle. Light on, light off. Nothing else.

Renjun’s nerves started to ebb. So far more than 10 of his classmates had gone, and none had gotten a familiar. He couldn't feel too bad if he didn’t either. Some of the professors were frowning.

Another student walked into the circle. 30 seconds passed, before the silence was broken by a raucous cawing noise. A crow flew down from a nearby tree and landed a couple steps from the edge of the circle. The crow hopped toward the circle, and when its beak penetrated the circle's edge, Renjun thought he could see a connection forming between the girl and the crow, shimmering strands of light slightly more bright the the pale circle light spreading out from each of them, reaching across the distance between them, strands he wasn't sure he was supposed to see, strands he wasn't sure he saw, maybe part of his imagination. He almost turned away—it was too personal to watch. He almost missed when it all went wrong.

He didn't know if the girl pulled back or the crow did, or if neither did and the wrongness happened when those strands of light between them touched, in that brief moment too personal to see. He supposed it didn't matter. There was a sensation of a vital piece twisting out of place, and the girl was stepping back, and the crow's eyes were going milky-white. The girl would have fallen if the person behind her didn't catch her. The crow started to leap up, trying to take flight. One professor barked a stream of words at another one, and Professor Koon rushed up, touching the crow's wings before it could fly. It slumped at her touch. She picked it up and carried it away. Her expression was sad.

They moved on as if nothing had happened. Some of his classmates murmured around him, condolences for the girl, or condescension for her failure, but no one talked about the milky-white eyes of the crow. It was as if no one cared how everything it had once been had been siphoned away in a moment's bid for magic, leaving a husk whose only imperative was to survive. Renjun felt sick.

Then it was YangYang's turn. Renjun had an urge to pull him back, but YangYang was already stepping into the circle, the glow of the light already coming up around him.

It took less than 30 seconds for a rustle to sound from somewhere in the grass. Blades of grass shifted in a snaking motion, advancing in fast motion toward them. When it neared the circle, a head popped out of the grass. The rest of the animal soon followed. It was a small creature with a long body and a black-tipped tail. It had dark brown fur aside from a white belly, and its face was narrow, a little fox-like. A weasel, maybe? Renjun had never seen one before. It made a beeline for YangYang and entered the circle.

Renjun saw the same strands of light begin to curl out from YangYang and the animal, but before they even made it far from YangYang’s skin, YangYang knelt down and held his hand out to the animal. A professor spoke in the background, an alarmed kind of warning, maybe telling him to get back up, but YangYang wasn't listening and Renjun wasn't either. The animal tilted its head up at YangYang then back down to his hand. It leapt toward YangYang, its mouth open, and Renjun thought for a horrible second that it was going to sink its teeth into his arm. But it only landed on his hand, and began to clamber up his arm to his shoulder. As it moved, those strands of light coming out from each of them connected. Nothing shifted out of place, nothing snapped. Their strands of light twisted around each other, each strand tying into the other until Renjun couldn't tell where one strand began and the other ended.

When the creature reached YangYang's shoulder, it turned in a circle until it found a comfortable position to perch in. YangYang ran a finger through the fur on its head, his eyes a little wide, while the light of the circle went out. The light between YangYang and his familiar blazed for a half-second more before it faded out of Renjun’s view. YangYang stood, and everyone clapped. YangYang broke out into a smile. It was the widest smile Renjun had seen on him yet, and that was saying something.

Donghyuck went after YangYang. Like YangYang, he stepped into the circle without hesitation. The moment the light washed over him, sounds erupted in the forest. Birdsong from birds that shouldn't have been awake at night, hissing, growls, a sound eerily similar to a cry of pain. The osprey appeared first above the trees, its great wings beating against the night air. It was followed by a stag and a cougar, who raced side by side toward Donghyuck. The cougar had a fresh cut on its right flank. Renjun hadn’t thought there were cougars in this forest.

All three of them reached the circle at the same time. Light flared between them. It was almost blinding. Renjun had to hold up a hand to shield his eyes, but when he looked around everyone else was staring straight through that blinding light as if...as if it wasn’t there.

The light twisting out from the three animals, the light streaming from Donghyuck. All of it tangling into a painful mess that could not sustain itself, fighting each other, fighting themselves. A bead of sweat ran down Donghyuck's forehead.

Renjun felt rather than heard the strands twist and snap. The stag's and the cougar's eyes went milky-white.

Professors came out and cast that same spell that caused them to slump and fall. They were dragged away while the osprey hovered in front of Donghyuck. The osprey screamed into the night, a cry of triumph. Donghyuck was smiling. Everyone was clapping. "Three of them, can you believe that?" Whispers flying around. But Renjun could only watch the stag and cougar being dragged away.

He felt sick again. And then he was walking up toward the circle, bile not far from the back of his throat.

Thinking of hollow empty things, of shells, of husks, of the dead leaves that gathered in piles in fall.

He almost didn’t take the last step into the circle, but one of the professors made an impatient noise and waved at him to move. He swallowed, and stepped in. The pale glow effused him, and his hair floated up around him. The strands swirled around his face. Though he knew the circle was nothing more than projection magic amplifying his magic, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had taken his magic and cracked it open, until his insides were spilling out into the dark of night for all to see.

It wasn't like he'd get a familiar anyway. He'd be another one of those silent passes. The seconds ticked by. He tried to keep track, but he wasn't sure if his counting was on time, and he lost count somewhere after 30.

He thought he saw a movement in the corner of his vision, and he averted his eyes. _Go away,_ he thought uselessly.

The black cat padded in through the grass. Its eyes reflected the light emanating from the circle.

_Go away,_ Renjun thought again, but the cat continued forward, relentless, and stepped into the circle.

It sat on its haunches and watched him. They stared at each other.

Renjun waited for the strands of light to curl out from his skin, but the seconds ticked by, and his heart sank. He knew then that it wasn't going to work. He saw nothing from him or the cat.

The light of the circle went out around him. He waited with despair for the cat's eyes to turn that horrible milky-white, but the cat simply blinked at him. Everyone clapped around him.

He continued to stare at the cat, until a professor cleared his throat. Renjun walked down to join his friends, and the cat trailed after him. He didn't know what he was supposed to feel, but he was sure he was supposed to feel—a bond, a connection, a something.

Donghyuck and YangYang clapped him on the back. "You did it, you loser," Donghyuck said. "After all your whining about not getting a familiar earlier, I feel cheated."

"I didn't whine," Renjun protested.

And looking at the cat he still felt no connection with, Renjun wasn't sure he had done anything. The cat proceeded to lick its paw.

* * *

After a couple days, Renjun came to the conclusion that the cat was just that. A cat. Not a cat familiar. A cat.

When he told Donghyuck that he couldn't talk to his "familiar" through his mind, Donghyuck squinted at him like he was crazy.

They were sitting on a rock, still warm after being baked in the sun for the whole day. Wind blew through their hair. It wasn't the rock they used to come up to for the mixed class runs. Those runs had finally ended, but the five of them still liked to go out into the forest after class, find somewhere to sit, and talk. Often it was six of them now, since Jisung joined now and again. Renjun thought Chenle would complain about that, but oddly he'd been pretty quiet about it. All he'd said was, "I can't stop him, so why try?" Renjun didn't know if Chenle noticed that sometimes he sat next to Jisung even when there were other options.

Today, Donghyuck and Renjun had ditched the rest of them.

"But why?" Jeno had asked when Renjun had asked to talk with Donghyuck privately.

"Witch gossip. You wouldn't be interested," Donghyuck had said.

"Try me," Jeno had said.

"No, I really think we won't," Renjun had said, and walked off with an arm around Donghyuck's shoulder. Jeno's newfound interest in his activities was starting to wear on him. The interest had started only after Renjun gave him blood, and though Renjun understood what that timing meant, he kept tricking himself into thinking that Jeno actually wanted to know more about him, that Jeno actually cared. Renjun had to remind himself that a vampire would want to keep tabs on someone they were feeding off of. He couldn’t blame Jeno for that. It was convenient.

Renjun leaned back on his hands, resting them on the warm surface of the rock. He could see the school and some mountains in the distance. He felt an odd sense of deja vu, as if he'd seen this image before.

"What do you mean you can't talk to your familiar?" Donghyuck asked.

"That I can't? Why? Do you and your familiar talk a lot?"

"Yeah, all the time," Donghyuck said. "We're talking right now."

Renjun didn't know whether to be offended that Donghyuck was only giving half his attention to their conversation, or to be amazed at Donghyuck's ability to conduct multiple conversations at the same time. He settled for glaring up at Donghyuck's familiar, who Renjun thought got too much of his attention already. The osprey sat perched on a tree branch above them. It met his glare straight on, and began to preen its feathers. The bird almost looked smug. _Wait until he gets tired of you, stupid bird,_ Renjun thought.

"What's so great about having them in your mind anyway? I like my privacy, thanks," Renjun said.

"That's the whole point of having a familiar. So you can share your thoughts and abilities," Donghyuck said, rolling his eyes. "Like just yesterday, my familiar let me take a backseat joyride when he went hunting. It was legit the coolest out-of-body experience. I could see everything he saw, and let me tell you, 20-20 vision has nothing on his eyesight. And the feeling of the kill, and the taste of the fish...I think it might have ruined fish for me forever..."

Renjun let Donghyuck talk on about his familiar, resigning himself to hearing this again in the near future. He had to take back what he’d thought earlier. Donghyuck wasn't going to get tired of the stupid bird. The osprey continued to preen his feathers, and Renjun didn't think he was reading too much into it. The bird was definitely smug.

"The feeling of the kill? Psychotic much, Donghyuck?"

"Better watch out at night, Renjun." Donghyuck wiggled his eyebrows.

Renjun was a little jealous. He wondered what it'd be like to see through the eyes of a familiar, or to be able to speak to one through his mind. His familiar couldn't do any of that. All the cat did was follow him around.

Actually, Renjun was pretty sure his "familiar" was an ordinary cat that had wandered by accident into the witches' familiar ritual. Judging by the sleekness of the fur, possibly a former house cat. Renjun wondered briefly if he should try to find the owners, but when he mentioned this to the cat, he yowled like he was irritated with Renjun. Or like he was hungry, which he seemed to be most of the time. It was really a bag of mixed signals.

The cat had no collar or other identifiers, but Renjun kept an eye out for "Missing Pet" posters on the way to and from school.

At first Donghyuck had argued with Renjun, saying there was no way the familiar ritual spell had messed up that badly. With a smugness that made Renjun want to smack him, Donghyuck said that maybe Renjun wasn't as compatible with his familiar as he was with his stupid bird. Donghyuck insisted that Renjun's bond with his familiar could still be in its early formative stages. And there was the possibility that his half-humaness was interfering with the bond, making the process even slower.

Renjun didn’t think it worked that way, but there was no harm in trying. He liked the cat, and okay, maybe he did think it would be cool to have a familiar. So sue him.

So Donghyuck and Renjun sat on the floor while Renjun stared at the cat for hours, feeling increasingly stupid while he thought at it. _Hello? Are you there? Uh… Please help me out here._

On day three, Donghyuck caved, not because their efforts had been useless, but because he walked in on Renjun dangling a feather wand in front of the cat while the cat tried to swipe it from the air.

"It _is_ just a cat," Donghyuck said, voice filled with wonder.

"That's what I've been saying," Renjun said.

"Yeah, but no self-respecting familiar would play with a cat toy," Donghyuck said. The cat hissed at Donghyuck. Renjun laughed. So far the cat didn't seem to like Donghyuck much.

"We can't keep him," Donghyuck said. "No pets policy, remember?"

"But it was fine when you thought he was a familiar."

"That's different."

Renjun opened his eyes wide, gunning for something like puppy-dog eyes. He'd picked up a trick or two from Jaemin, though from the disgust on Donghyuck's face, he hadn’t picked up the technique. "I'll take care of everything. Please, Donghyuck? Even if he's not a familiar, maybe the magic did bind him to me in some way. We can put out posters and see if the owners come to pick him up."

"Fine. Stop looking at me like that already," Donghyuck said, raising his hands to shield his eyes.

It was weird, but in the few days he'd had the cat around, Renjun had gotten fond of him. He'd gotten used to a presence by his side when he slept. He'd even gotten used to paws kneading his chest in the early morning, asking for food, and to losing access to his keyboard at inconvenient times during the day.

The cat was odd in some ways. He followed Renjun around everywhere. He had no fear of people or larger animals, which fed into Renjun’s theory that he’d been pampered by a former owner. Sometimes he rode on Renjun's shoulder like other familiars. This was only a good deal for the cat—he was heavy and Renjun's shoulders were not meant for such abuse. When Renjun spoke to him he listened and made noises at the right times, as if he understood.

* * *

Renjun smoothed out the photo in front of him, picked up his phone, and started the call.

Three rings went through. Renjun was about to hang up because he didn't know what to say if it went through to voicemail. He didn't know what to say even if it didn't, but it'd be easier to speak if he knew someone was listening.

She picked up on the fourth ring. "Renjun? Why are you calling?" his mother asked, with a tinge of panic, which shocked him enough that he went quiet. "Renjun? Are you there?"

"I got a familiar," he blurted out.

"You did?" He tried not to be offended at how surprised she was. He didn’t have a right to be, when it wasn't a real familiar anyway. "Congratulations," she said, and she sounded like she meant it.

He took a breath. "That's not why I called though. You know how I'm in advanced creation magic."

"Yes," she said.

He tried to ignore the edge creeping into her voice, and plunged onward. "I saw a photo of you from when you were young, with my professor. Professor Koon. Jenna Koon. Did you know her?"

"Jenna? Jenna's the one teaching creation magic?" Renjun didn't understand the relief he was hearing. "I didn't know. That's great."

"Are you friends?" Renjun asked.

"We were. We've been out of contact for a long time." The barest hint of sadness now, and if he didn't know his mother so well he would have missed it. That wasn't an emotion he'd heard from her in a long time.

Renjun hesitated, but he'd already gone this far, and his mother didn't seem upset. "There was a vampire in the photo too."

"Was there?"

"Yes. It looked like all three of you were friends."

"He was probably one of Jenna's friends. She was quite popular back then."

It wasn't until some time after the call ended that Renjun realized he'd never said the vampire was a he.

* * *

Jeno pushed Renjun back up against the wall.

"Whoa, slow down," Renjun said.

"Sorry," Jeno said, though he sounded more impatient than apologetic. "It's been a while." A while was a little less than a week. Renjun had been busy taking care of the cat, who he wanted to name but hadn't. It'd be less sad that way when the owners came to pick him up. He’d finally gotten up the posters, with some help from Donghyuck and no help from the cat, who sat on the papers until Renjun had to lift him off.

Jeno ran a hand down the side of Renjun's neck and over his shoulder. Usually, Renjun would have shivered at the touch, out of reflex mostly, but he was thinking about the posters they'd put up. Should he have put his email as well as his phone number?

"You're distracted," Jeno said, with a slightest hint of a pout.

That was enough to surprise Renjun into turning his attention back to Jeno. "Huh? Sorry. Go ahead."

Jeno huffed, but went in for the bite.

The cat mewed.

Renjun jerked back reflexively. The cat had hopped onto a desk and was watching them, its tail switching back and forth. Jeno turned around, following Renjun's gaze.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Renjun said, but the cat continued to watch them, its tail switching more aggressively from side to side.

Jeno turned back around to Renjun, unconcerned, but Renjun put a hand between Jeno’s mouth and his shoulder, blocking his way. "I can't do this while he's watching," Renjun said.

"He's just a cat," Jeno said. "Didn't you say that he's not even your familiar?"

"Still. Just—wait."

Renjun scooped up the cat in his arms, and carried him across the room. The cat seemed to understand what was going on because he began to squirm in Renjun's arms, making more mewing noises. Renjun deposited him outside the door.

"Wait here," Renjun said, and closed the door.

"Finally," Jeno said, and leaned back in, but the cat began to yowl. Renjun heard him scratching on the door.

Renjun pushed Jeno away. "Wait, I've got to check on him."

"Again? Can't you ignore him?"

"He's my responsibility," Renjun said. "And I thought you liked cats."

"I do! But..."

Renjun walked back to the door and opened it. The cat rushed back in and wound around Renjun's ankles, mewing plaintively.

"Come on," Renjun said. "You can't hate on all my friends. Jeno's nice, see?" The cat hissed once at Jeno. Renjun tried to think that this was better than plain out ignoring him, which was what the cat did to Donghyuck and Chenle. The only one of Renjun's friends the cat seemed to have come to a truce with was Jaemin, and Renjun suspected that was because Jaemin's first reaction was to call him the most beautiful cat he'd ever seen and bribe him with food. Even then, the cat didn’t let Jaemin touch him.

Jeno bared his teeth back, which Renjun didn't think was particularly useful or smart. He was pretty sure the cat didn't care.

"Just ignore him for five minutes," Jeno said. Renjun understood his hunger. He felt it too.

But the cat pawed at the hem of Renjun's jeans and meowed, staring up at him with big, hopeful eyes, and who could resist that? Renjun leaned down and let the cat climb into his arms. The cat purred.

Jeno made an exasperated noise at the back of his throat.

"I'm sorry, but I can't," Renjun said.

"So I'm just supposed to wait for you to be done with this?"

The implications there irritated Renjun. That he was supposed to be available on Jeno's schedule, that Jeno had a right to his time and his blood. But he was more irritated by himself, because it was killing him not to be available now.

Renjun said, "If you can't wait, I'm sure you can get blood from someone else for a while. I know there's plenty of takers." He managed to make his voice light, but each word felt like a coal in his mouth, heavy and bitter to the taste. Why was it so hard to get the words out? It shouldn't have been. Maybe he was more far gone than he thought.

But he'd been trying so hard not to be.

"You're okay with that?" Jeno said incredulously.

He should have been, but there he was, the taste of coal in his mouth. "Should I not be?"

"Oh, just, most people aren't," Jeno said. "Do you think I’m looking for other takers?"

Aren’t you? Renjun wanted to say, but he didn’t. He looked away.

“Because I’m not. Right now, you taste the best,” Jeno said.

Heat rushed to Renjun's face.

"You mean I'm your favorite flavor blood bag? Thanks a lot, Jeno."

Jeno grimaced. "That's a crude way of putting it, and that’s not really what I meant—"

"My bad. I guess—I mean—it's good that you like it. Ha ha." He'd just said ha ha out loud. How mortifying.

Renjun did what he did best when confronted with embarrassment. "It's late, I got to go," he said. He turned tail, and fled.

The cat purred with contentment against his chest.

* * *

Renjun laid on his bed and put an arm over his eyes. From the way he’d reacted earlier, he was already in too deep. He wasn’t supposed to care if Jeno wanted to feed on other witches. He wasn’t supposed to be pleased when he didn’t want to, or disappointed when he heard the reason why.

He didn’t think he could deny it now—he wanted more from Jeno than this superficial connection they had. He wanted so badly to deny it. It was scary when they’d already petered out into little more than blood sharing. He should just let it run its course.

The cat curled by his side.

"You're really friendly for a cat, you know?" Renjun said. "How'd you end up here?"

Renjun had no warning but a tug in his gut. He felt it before he saw it. Layers upon layers of energy unfurling, blossoming out into a wave of darkness.

Renjun scrambled back. He fell off his bed, and rolled.

Darkness spilled out around the cat. Renjun reached for the cat, to pull him back to safety, but the cat's body began to elongate. It was like the cat was stretching, but the stretching didn't stop. Renjun became glad for the darkness, because it hid the details as each limb stretched and cracked, transforming into a grotesque parody of what it used to be before transforming again. The cat’s eyes shifted from pure yellow to a shade closer to orange.

Renjun backed up. When the darkness cleared, a boy sat on his bed. A boy not much older than him, with a narrow sharp face, orange-yellow cat's eyes, and clawed hands.

"Donghyuck," Renjun shouted, but there was no response.

"He's out right now," the boy said. "I was waiting for him to be out so I could talk to you."

"Why are you here?" Renjun asked. Every instinct was screaming at him to run, but he couldn't move. Maybe still waiting, hoping, for the cat to come back, so that he could write this off as a bad hallucination.

"I'm here to help you," the boy said.

"Why should I believe that?" Renjun said, before regretting his undiplomatic response. The demon was going to finish what he'd started before in the forest, and Renjun was going to have to say he died because he couldn't stop himself from asking one last stupid question.

"Believe it or not, it's true. I didn't kill you the last time, and I didn't kill you these past few days, even though it would have been easy." The demon boy frowned. "You're a little too defenseless, you know? You should be glad I'm here. Anyway, I came here at great personal risk to myself. I've played the part of the good pet, even though cat food is disgusting. Are these enough reasons for you?"

Renjun found he could move again. "I don't—I don't know. I can't deal with this right now. It's a lot to wrap my head around," he said, backing up again.

The demon boy flopped back onto _Renjun's_ bed. He had no respect, lying on someone else's bed like it was his own, without permission. Then Renjun remembered the demon boy had already been doing that for days.

"Then come back when you're ready," the demon boy said with a yawn. "Bring any of the professors and you and your friends are dead meat. Starting with your sparkly magic roommate."

Renjun got his door open and backed outside into the hall, acutely aware that he was being kicked out of his own room. The demon boy let him go with a half wave. Renjun saw him transforming back into a cat as Renjun left.

Renjun grabbed his bag and shoved his feet into his shoes. Come back? Did the demon think he was stupid? He sent a message to Donghyuck. _Stay out tonight. The electricity and wifi's out._ Renjun knew Donghyuck had some important essay he was writing so that should be enough to keep him away. Donghyuck had plenty of friends. Donghyuck should be able to find somewhere to crash.

Where would he go? Chenle's? He scrambled to think of some excuse, as he threw open the front door. The electricity one wouldn't cut it, because Chenle would want to come over and try to fix it. Maybe he could ask Donghyuck to ask his friends to take him too.

Renjun walked straight into someone. "Sorry," he said, before he saw it was Jeno, standing at their door.

"If you're looking for Donghyuck, he's out," Renjun said, only half-aware of how frantic he sounded. Jeno's confusion was quickly shifting to alarm, and Renjun tried to keep calm. He probably had a wild-eyed crazed look going on, so he doubted it mattered. "I'm heading out too, so there's no one at home, so sorry but you can't come over right now. If you're looking for Donghyuck, he's probably at the library, but I don't know which one. But I can message him, or you can message him? You probably have his number."

"It’s nothing urgent. I’ll see him in class tomorrow. You...okay?" Jeno asked.

"Yeah, great. Super great. Just no one at home right now, electricity's not working, so you've got to go somewhere else, sorry."

Jeno trailed after Renjun out of the apartment. Renjun called Chenle, but the call went through to voicemail. He dialed again.

"Come on, Chenle, pick up," he said.

"What are you calling Chenle for?" Jeno asked.

"Trying to stay over at his place for the night," Renjun said. "If he'd only pick up."

Jeno watched him pace around while the call went to voicemail again. "You can stay at my place," Jeno said. "Jaemin won't mind."

Renjun hesitated, but it was too good of an offer to turn down. It was that, or stay with the demon, or sleep on the street. He nodded.

When they got to Jeno’s apartment, Jaemin was in the living room, lounging on the couch, twirling a pen with one hand. His eyes widened when he saw Renjun.

"Electricity cut off at my place. Jeno said I could stay over?"

Jaemin's gaze slid over to Jeno, but all he said was, "Yeah, of course. You can use the couch, let me get out of the way."

"He can use my bed," Jeno said. "So you don't have to move."

"It's fine, I can use the floor. I don't want to be a bother," Renjun said, thinking maybe he should have gone to Chenle's after all.

"No, no, how could we let you do that? It's no bother for Jeno, I'm sure," Jaemin said, and smiled sweetly at Jeno. Jeno narrowed his eyes at Jaemin.

They talked for a bit. Jaemin seemed to notice Renjun's reticence, and covered it up by complaining about his witch partner, who was talented but could be a control freak sometimes.

"Can't wait until we switch partners again. I got this whole lecture on punctuality last time when I showed up late to our meeting, and I wasn't even five minutes late," he said. "Want to be my partner next time, Renjun?"

"How do you know I'm not a control freak?" Renjun said with a laugh.

"Jisung said when you and Chenle 'practice', you two spend half the time talking shit instead of practicing. He asked if everyone does that," Jaemin said.

"That traitor," Renjun said. He'd keep this in mind for next time he saw Jisung.

"Where's your cat?" Jaemin asked.

Renjun was tempted to tell Jeno and Jaemin the truth, but with the demon’s threat still fresh in the mind, he couldn't form the words. "At home, sleeping," Renjun said.

Later Renjun found himself in Jeno's room, with Jeno's teeth sinking into his skin, all thoughts of demons pushed to the back of his mind. He tried to remind Jeno that Jaemin was in the next room over, but Jeno didn't seem to care. Renjun himself found it hard to think, let alone care. Jeno was greedier than usual, movements touched with impatience, and Renjun didn't like the way that set his blood on fire. Usually Jeno would be the one to pull back first, but this time Renjun had to gently push him away when he started to feel fatigue beyond his lack of sleep.

A wave of exhaustion washed over Renjun as soon as Jeno drew back, and he slumped against Jeno's mattress.

In the haze halfway between waking and sleeping, he thought he felt someone draw up the covers over him. A hand brushing against his shoulder, energy that tingled with warmth against his skin. A "good night" against the back of his neck.

He thought he might have said, "Good night" back. He meant to say thank you, but he didn't know if he got that far. He tried to say I'm sorry, but he didn't know why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> basically just the chapter in which renjun gets a familiar, sort of!


	26. the cat act

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> btw for anyone who has already read the chapter, edited after the initial post for a mistake in the scene with koon (thank you commenter for catching it ><)

Renjun woke with his back against something solid. Tingling energy radiated out from where it touched him, and he turned under the covers so that he could lean against it, savoring how the energy ran over his skin. 

The solid something shifted a bit when he moved, and made a noise of complaint.

Renjun’s eyes flew open. He made several realizations at once. Realization one: the solid something was Jeno. Jeno’s back, to be specific. Realization two: he had curled himself against Jeno's back—already bad. More bad—sometime in there he’d pressed his nose into Jeno's upper back near his shoulder. Realization three: Jeno smelled good. Wait— Which snowballed to realization four: if Jeno woke up right now, he’d think Renjun was a creep. And he’d be right. Luckily that hadn’t happened yet. Renjun carefully drew away. Jeno’s eyelashes fluttered, but his eyes didn’t open.

In sleep Jeno seemed younger, or perhaps just more at peace, his hair fanned against his forehead and pillow, his lashes once again still. It was uncool that he still looked good in sleep. Renjun had hoped Jeno would sleep with his mouth open, and maybe drool too, but no luck there.

Before Renjun thought better of it, he reached out a hand and moved away some hair that fell over Jeno's eyes.

Jeno stirred at his touch, and Renjun froze. He withdrew his hand and glared at it. He decided it was about time to get out of there before his sleep-muddled senses got him to do something like that again.

Then he remembered he didn't have a place to go. Unless he included demon-infested places, which he generally tried not to. Trying to stay alive, and all that. And Donghyuck—Donghyuck! Donghyuck wouldn't have gone home, right? No, he had that early morning class he complained about. Renjun wanted to tell Donghyuck about the demon, but he wasn’t sure if the demon would know somehow.

Telling Donghyuck could be a danger in its own right—Donghyuck wasn’t stupid, but he might see taking the demon on as a challenge, and he couldn’t resist a challenge.

Renjun sat up in the bed and ran his hands through his hair. He should have taken the night to mull it over, but he'd spent a lot less time thinking and a lot more time getting chomped on. Thanks, past Renjun. It wasn’t all bad. He had gotten a good night's sleep, which he’d needed.

Renjun tried to think of another way out, but no matter how he turned it over in his head, he reached the same conclusion. He had to go back.

He had to go back before someone else did. The demon hadn't lied. He could have killed Renjun, and he hadn't. Not yet, anyway. Renjun didn’t know if his friends would get the same treatment.

It had to mean Renjun had something he wanted. A bargaining chip to keep himself and his friends safe. If only he had any idea what it was.

He didn't realize he was chewing on his thumbnail until he tasted the salt of his skin in his mouth. His irritation flared. He thought he’d gotten rid of that bad habit.

Renjun slipped off the bed. Jeno had probably just gone to sleep, so he tried not to make much noise, but the bed creaked as he moved. Jeno stirred again, and this time he woke up.

Jeno blinked at Renjun through squinted eyes. The blinds were drawn, but a small amount of light filtered in through the cracks.

"Morning?" Jeno said.

"Sorry for waking you," Renjun said. Jeno rolled over in Renjun's direction, inadvertently rolling himself into a cocoon of his own blankets. He made an attempt to get up, not much more than lifting his head from the pillow. Renjun waved his hands. "No, you should go back to sleep. It's day time, and it's pretty early."

"I should walk you out..." Jeno yawned.

Even half-asleep, burritoed in his blanket, Jeno managed to appear close to flawless. Sometimes, Renjun really didn't like looking at him. Maybe because Jeno was half asleep, he seemed softer though, less sharp angles and pristine beauty, less the vampire. Renjun didn’t know how he felt about that.

"I know my way out. Go back to sleep," Renjun said. "Thanks for letting me stay over."

Jeno let his head fall back to the pillow, though his eyes followed Renjun as he gathered his bag and his jacket.

"You going to class?" Jeno asked.

"Home," Renjun said.

He couldn't help tensing as he said it, and maybe Jeno noticed, or maybe it was pure coincidence that Jeno said, "Do you want to go home?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Renjun said.

Jeno yawned again. "No wifi..." Pure coincidence, then.

"I'm just going to pick up some things. It's fine," Renjun said. "But if I don't come in to mixed class today, will you tell Donghyuck not to come home?"

"Why?" Jeno narrowed his eyes, but it came out as more of a sleepy squint.

"I might need some privacy to work out something with my familiar."

Jeno mumbled an okay, and his eyes fluttered closed again. His dark hair made a stark contrast against the white of his pillow.

* * *

On his way out of Asomateus, Renjun ran into the vampire from the woods.

"Jeno's friend," the vampire said, "Renjun, right?"

It took Renjun some time to place a name to the face, because he was more used to seeing it sunken in, under the glow of hospital lights. "Yeah, um, Doyoung?"

Doyoung's gaze trailed up Renjun's torso, lingered on his shoulder where Jeno had bitten him, and stopped on Renjun's face. Renjun barely resisted the urge to tug at his neckline, even though he knew the bite mark was already hidden.

"Thanks for the tip on Kun's journal," Renjun said, trying to distract himself.

"You found it?" Doyoung asked.

"Yeah.”

"What was in it?" Doyoung asked. "I still can't remember." There was a desperate kind of edge to his voice that made Renjun hesitate. "If I knew, maybe I could help," Doyoung added.

"Some coordinates," Renjun said. That sounded safe enough. "But I'm sure the professors have already checked it out."

"That's better, isn't it? Then it should be safe to go there now," Doyoung said.

"I don't know. I need to talk with my friends first."

Doyoung shook his head. "Going as a big group would make it too easy to be caught by the professors. A couple people would be best, maybe three at most. I don't know about your other friends, but I've known Jeno for a long time, and he's not discrete enough to avoid their notice.” Doyoung studied Renjun’s face. “I feel like you would be more careful, though."

* * *

Renjun opened the door to his apartment. He might have fumbled the keys twice, but no one needed to know that but him.

"Demon, I'm back," Renjun called. He didn't hear a response. He flicked on the hallway light, and started to walk toward the living room. His palms grew sweaty. He was really banking on the demon not being interested in his immediate death.

The demon lounged on his living room couch, one arm over the top of the sofa. He inclined his head when he saw Renjun. "Welcome back," he said.

When Renjun stood still in the entranceway, the demon waved a hand at Renjun, swung his legs off the couch, and patted the space beside him. "Sit," the demon said.

Renjun settled on the corner of the couch the furthest away from the demon. The demon seemed amused by this. "Are you afraid of me?" the demon asked.

"I'd be stupid not to be," Renjun said, half under his breath.

The demon smiled. "That's right," he said. "You would be." In one movement, the demon uncoiled himself from his sitting position and extended himself across the couch toward Renjun, until he had one clawed hand under Renjun's chin. He held Renjun's head between his second and third finger, and Renjun felt the sharp tips of the ends of the claws against the back corners of his jaw. "It would be very easy to hurt you, if I wanted to."

The demon ran one finger from the edge of Renjun's jaw toward his chin. "I could impale you right through here. It'd be fast, painless." The finger stopped at the soft spot right under Renjun's chin. "Don't look so frightened." Renjun glared at him, and the demon had the audacity to chuckle. "I don't want to hurt you, so you don't need to be afraid."

"You're saying it doesn't matter if I'm afraid or not."

"You could take it that way," the demon said. He considered Renjun for a moment. "Though in your case, perhaps it's better for you to be more cautious. In general."

"What do you mean?"

The demon let his finger trail down the side of Renjun's neck over the side of his shoulder, and stop over the bite mark. Seriously? Even the demon? "That's none of your business," Renjun said.

"Suit yourself," the demon said, withdrawing his hand. "But you should remember I'm not the only one that can hurt you. As you are now, at least. Defenseless, weak, barely trained."

Renjun didn't need the demon to tell him that. "What do you want, demon?" Renjun asked.

"A bit rude to call me demon, don't you think? It doesn't feel personal."

It was a bit rude for the demon to make himself at home rent-free in Renjun's apartment, but Renjun hadn’t called him out for that. "What do you want me to call you then?"

"You can call me Sicheng."

"Is that your name?"

"One of them," Sicheng said.

"What do you want, Sicheng?"

"I already said, I want to help you."

Like Renjun was going to believe that. But it didn't matter what he believed, for now. "What kind of help?"

"For one thing, I could help you with your magic. Right now, you don't feel like you're in control of it, do you? Too little, too much, you can't be sure it'll do what you want it to."

"How do you—it's been better, lately," Renjun said.

"But you don't think that will last," Sicheng said. "And I agree with you."

Renjun clasped his hands together. His silence was probably the same as agreeing. "Why me? I can't be the only witch with bad magic out there."

The demon chuckled. "You're not. But you are the only part human one."

Renjun's head snapped up.

"Don't be so surprised. You can’t hide the feeling of your humanness from me. It's been so long since I've met a part human with magic. It’s interesting, isn’t it?" The demon tapped the center of Renjun's chest. "When you can get your magic to work, it doesn't feel right. And you think, no, you’re past thought—you’re afraid that it’ll never feel right."

Renjun had never had someone dissect him in so few words. It was disconcerting.

"Get out of my head," Renjun said.

"I'm not in your head" Sicheng said mildly. "I can't do that unless I possess you."

"How do I know you haven't possessed me?"

Sicheng covered his mouth, and his shoulders shook. Renjun realized he was laughing. "You have enough free will to talk back to me, and you think you’re possessed? They don't teach you anything in this school of yours, do they?" Sicheng said. "Then again, what would a witch or vampire know about human possession? Anyway, I made an educated guess. As I said, you're not the first part human I've met."

"What happened to the last one?"

"Nothing." Renjun doubted that. "He didn't know what I was. Barely knew what he was. I observed for a while, but he didn’t have enough magic to interest me in sticking around. Just enough for something strange to happen every once in a while, and to feel like something inside himself was always out of place. The way you might."

Renjun said nothing.

"You, though, you have enough magic to be interesting. In another life, you could have been a mid-grade witch, but in this one, no matter how much you practice, you can’t channel your magic the way a normal witch can."

"Practice is helping," Renjun said. It came out weak. Damn it. He'd never be a good actor.

"You know the truth, as you always have. Practice can’t help you. You've got all the pieces to conduct magic, and all the pieces to reject it, and they can’t fit together. You're broken by design."

Renjun swallowed hard. "And that interests you."

"I can change that. Or should I say, with my help, you can change yourself?” Sicheng's eyes glittered.

Renjun knew how this went. His point of reference? Practically every child's tale known to man, and probably all the ones known to supernaturals too. Demon offers a gift, you accept, and sooner or later the demon takes your soul, or drags you into the fiery depths of some eternal inferno, or generally makes your life suck.

It still took him a long time to say, "I don't want your help.”

Sicheng leaned back on the couch and put his hands under his head. "That's a shame. But you will."

Renjun should have known it wouldn't be that easy to get rid of him.

* * *

Jaemin was sipping from a cup of coffee when Jeno got out of bed and meandered into the living room. Jeno pulled a face. "Gross," he said.

"You don't know what you're missing out on," Jaemin said. "It's good."

"Last time I checked, your taste still sucks, so..."

They settled into a comfortable silence, broken occasionally by the scribble of Jaemin's pen on the paper in front of him. Jeno tapped his fingers in a rhythm from a song he'd listened to last night.

"You're drinking from Renjun, aren't you?" Jaemin said.

Jeno's fingers stuttered in their rhythm.

“Jeno?”

"Yeah," he said. "I wasn't trying to hide it from you. I just—"

"It's okay. I don't need you to report to me who you're drinking from. Just—remember that Renjun's our friend, all right?"

"I know that," Jeno said.

Jaemin put his pen down.

"Then tell me you won't cut him off when you get tired of feeding on him."

"I wasn't going to. What makes you think that?"

Jaemin raised an eyebrow. "You have a pattern."

Jeno picked at a stray thread on the sofa cushion. "I wasn't trying to be friends with any of them before."

"And you want to with Renjun? Why?"

"You're friends with him. Maybe I trust your judgment."

Jaemin grinned. "As you should." He picked up his pen again, and twirled it between his fingers. “Still, Jeno Lee, you letting a witch stay over at our place? I never thought I’d see the day.”

* * *

Next to Renjun, YangYang clicked together two pieces of metal. YangYang's familiar ran around the hut, chasing after one of YangYang's automatons.

"Your weasel is destroying your bugs," Renjun said.

"She's not a weasel. She's an ermine," YangYang said. "It's different."

"A weasel would suit you better," Renjun said. YangYang's familiar stopped her chase and raised her head. Renjun could swear she looked reproachful. "Since you're always weaseling your way out of trouble."

One side of YangYang's lips curled in disgust. "That was lame, even for you."

Renjun elbowed him. "Anyway, she's destroying them. Are you going to do anything about that?"

"It's natural selection," YangYang said mournfully. "I can't stop the cycle of life."

Renjun was pretty sure he could, but he didn't comment on that. It was a stretch to call the bug bots alive in the first place. The floor around them was akin to a battlefield, the scrap metal corpses littering the ground, some of them still twitching the few legs that were left intact. Giant monster vs bug army, the godzilla remake Renjun really didn’t need to see.

YangYang's familiar didn't smash them all. Some of them she pounced on, caught, and let go. She didn’t touch YangYang’s favorite cockroach.

"Why don't you join her? Go have fun and chase, like cats do," Renjun said to Sicheng, who perched on the chair beside him. One of Sicheng's whiskers twitched. Renjun had no hold over Sicheng at all, not even a shadow of a familiar bond to command him with, but Sicheng couldn’t stop Renjun from saying what he wanted while pretending to be a cat.

After Sicheng saw YangYang's familiar run and roll on the ground, he’d settled himself with dignity by Renjun's side, as if to prove he was above it all. Renjun knew he wasn't. When Sicheng was in cat form, he still played with the feather wand. "I'm staying in character," he'd say, but Renjun had his doubts.

And just yesterday, he'd swiped one bag of Renjun's shrimp crackers and one bag of Donghyuck's chips from the kitchen, and left a trail of crumb evidence leading to Renjun's room. Renjun couldn't say it was his fake familiar that had stolen Donghyuck's chips, so he'd had to go out late at night to the grocery store and buy Donghyuck two bags to make up for it.

"I haven't had human food for so long," Sicheng had said around a mouthful of Renjun's crackers, instead of apologizing. When Renjun saw the crumbs on his floor, he'd seen red, hissed, "You better clean this up by the time I get back”, and slammed the door. He’d stalked away from his room, demon who could kill him be damned, and only after pacing to the kitchen to angrily scrub his dishes and lament his depleting cash, thought, wait, the demon can kill me. Damn.

To his surprise, when Renjun returned to his room, it was clean, and Sicheng didn't kill him. 

Renjun turned back to the paper in front of him. It was still blank. His work had degraded over time. He couldn't bring himself to paint. He drew instead, charcoal or graphite on paper, the black and white giving him more distance from reality. If he felt one negative emotion about the vision, he shut down. He'd force his hand to stop, shaking against the force of his magic that wanted to finish what it began, until it ran out. Then he'd crumple the half-finished drawing up and toss it in the trash.

Most of what he'd completed in the past month were landscapes, or day to day life with Donghyuck or Chenle or one of the others. Once, he'd drawn Jeno biting into his neck. His neck had throbbed like crazy until he shredded the drawing, thanking whatever higher powers were watching over him that YangYang hadn’t seen it.

"Professor Koon," YangYang called. "Can you take a look at my work?"

Professor Koon came by and peered over YangYang's shoulder. "I'm not sure if it'd be better to fit this here, or here..."

Even though Professor Koon wasn't looking at him, her physical presence beside them made him want to shrink in on himself. Each time she came close, guilt would rear its ugly head under his ribcage and settle heavy in his gut.

He couldn't take it anymore. "Professor Koon, can we talk?" Renjun said, after she'd finished with YangYang. "In private?"

"Sure," she said. Sicheng stretched out his back, getting ready to move, but Renjun said, "No, you stay here." He wasn't about to let the demon eavesdrop on him. Sicheng hissed, but let him go.

Professor Koon led him into the back. Renjun's guilt intensified as he stepped foot across the threshold into her office. The cupids were back in place on the boxes, all four of them pointed straight ahead.

Professor Koon poured them both a cup of tea, and they sat across from each other. Renjun watched the steam curl up from the teacup.

"I don't know if I belong in this class. My art's deteriorating. All I do is draw everyday moments from my life."

Professor Koon said, "The moments of everyday life are no less important than other ones. I wouldn’t call it deterioration."

"I don't see how it's useful. Everyone's making weapons or gear or something the training squadrons can use. YangYang's making spybots, while I'm drawing what I'm going to eat for breakfast tomorrow."

Professor Koon lowered her teacup back to the table. "Sometimes with our craft, we encounter obstacles we can't overcome right away. Prophetic gifts most of all. You may not be ready to see what your magic can show you yet."

"How will I know if I'm ready?" Renjun asked.

"No one can judge that except you," Koon said gently. "You may think the everyday moments aren’t important, but using your gift at all is a way to move forward. It allows you to become more familiar with your gift, and when you are more familiar, you may feel more prepared."

It wasn't fair that she could be so understanding, when she didn't know what he'd done. "I stole your photo," he blurted out. "The one with my mom."

Professor Koon's face fell, but she didn't seem surprised. "I had hoped that it wasn't you," she said.

"I'm sorry," Renjun said. But maybe he wasn't sorry enough, because then he was lying again. "I heard that you and my mom were friends back when she went here, but she wouldn't tell me anything. She never does. I wanted to know more about when she was young." He withdrew the photo from his pocket and held it out to Professor Koon. "I know I shouldn't have."

Professor Koon's expression softened when she took the photo from his hand. "Because of this, I’m going to assign you three weeks of cleaning out the central room.” Renjun nodded. She was letting him off easy, and they both knew it. “Next time, Renjun, don't break into my office. Just ask."

"Can I ask something now?"

"Go ahead."

"Were you all friends? My mom, when I asked her about it, she acted like she didn't know the vampire. I always thought...she didn't like vampires very much."

"We were friends. We've fallen out of contact," Koon said, sounding sad. "I would still consider her my friend, even if she doesn't feel the same way. As for Donghae, the two of them had a...falling out over your father. He didn't approve."

"Because my father was a human."

“That was a part of it, I’m sorry to say. Your father also had some unsavory ancestors, and vampires place more importance than we do on bloodlines. But those weren't the only reasons. Even I didn't approve for a long time because they were so different, and their relationship was very on and off. It was wrong of us, but at the time, we didn't think he was good enough for her.” Professor Koon stared off into the distance, blinked a couple times, and focused back on Renjun. “I'm sorry Renjun, I'm sure this is hard to hear."

"It's okay," Renjun couldn't feel much about a father he'd never known. "I'd rather know the truth." Renjun tried to hide his disappointment when he said, "So you've been out of contact for a really long time?"

"When your father disappeared, she cut herself off from the rest of us, no matter how we apologized. I understand...knowing what we used to say about him." Koon hesitated, before she added, "She will always be a dear friend to me though."

Renjun remembered the phone call. "Maybe she feels the same way," he said.

Koon smiled wanly at him, though he could tell she didn't believe him. "Now, Renjun, I have a question for you. Did you look at anything else besides the photos? There was a journal in the same box."

"I saw it, but I thought it might be your...diary? So I didn’t open it."

Koon shook her head in mock disappointment. "Not that curious about my life, are you?" she said, and let him go. As Renjun left, Koon ran her fingers over the photo he'd given back to her.

* * *

Weeks had passed, bled into a month, and Jeno was still taking Renjun's blood. Renjun was starting to get scared that he wouldn't be able to let go when the time came.

Sicheng tried to interrupt a couple times in the beginning, but Renjun had no qualms about pushing him aside now that he knew Sicheng was a demon and not a cat. Sicheng stopped trying after Renjun bought him dry cat food for a couple days.

"You have a death wish," Sicheng had said.

"I'm just trying to save money," Renjun had said innocently. "Taking care of you isn't cheap. Other familiars feed themselves, you know."

Sicheng had grumbled, and said something like, "Fine, let the vampire eat you, see if I care." But he'd started catching his own food, aside from the bags of snacks he continued to filch from Renjun. Renjun tried hiding his snacks, but Sicheng found each new hiding place within less than a day. So he stopped hiding them. He bought more snacks, and in return, he got some privacy when Jeno fed on him.

When it'd been a full 30 days since the start (Renjun wasn't counting. Not really. He just happened to know.), with Jeno licking the last droplets of blood off the side of his shoulder, Renjun got as close as he dared to asking outright. The adrenaline still coursing through his bloodstream made him a little less afraid. He felt a little less like he'd crash and burn. Maybe just crash. No follow up explosions.

"You're not tired of me yet?" Renjun asked.

"What do you mean?" Jeno's eyes were hooded, still in the after-feeding haze. It was a good time to ask because Jeno would speak with less thought than usual. It was the most honest version of Jeno Renjun could get, not that Jeno was much of a liar, but he wasn't always so raw.

"I thought you’d find someone else to feed on," Renjun said. He tried to make it sound like a joke. It didn't really work.

Jeno frowned. "Why?"

"Because that's what you usually do?" Jeno continued to frown, but he didn't deny it. "Because I don't want you to," Renjun said. Damn it. Maybe after feeding was the wrong time, because Jeno wasn't the only one who wasn't thinking straight. Renjun waited, his heart rate ticking upward traitorously.

"You don't want me to," Jeno said slowly, his mouth feeling out the words, some of his haze fading. His brows furrowed, and Renjun knew then that he must not have liked that. It must have come out sounding possessive. Shit. "Why?"

"I'm not sure you'd want me around if you weren't feeding on me."

Jeno's frown deepened. "Jaemin said the same thing. Is that what you think of me? That I'd kick my friends to the curb if I couldn't get something out of them?"

"I'm not saying that, Jeno."

"Then what are you saying?" Jeno said flatly.

"Look, I’m not questioning your loyalty to your friends or whatever.” But were they friends? But were they anything? “But your friends are pretty much all vampires, and you don't feed on them. Name one witch you've fed on that you've been friends with after."

Jeno ran a hand through his hair. "You already know there aren't any," he said. "But I wasn't lying when I said I wanted to change that. Even if we stop this. You can trust me on that.” Jeno kicked at a spot on the ground and glanced up at Renjun from under his eyelashes. “Can I trust you?"

"Yeah—yeah okay. You can trust me," Renjun said. Renjun didn't believe it, not really. But he wanted to.

* * *

The next time they switched partners, Renjun was paired up with Chenle again, and both Jeno and Jaemin were paired up with Donghyuck. That was a terrifying trio if there ever was one.

Renjun and Chenle high-fived each other when the announcement came out. Partnering with Chenle was kind of a two for one deal, because Jisung often tagged along.

"Please don't call us that," Chenle said. "We are not at all the same."

"Yeah, I'm the way cooler and better looking one," Jisung said.

"What? No one wants to see your ugly face, Park Jisung!"

Renjun sighed and put his earphones in to wait it out. Bickering was part of the deal.

Less than a quarter of the witches had gotten familiars during the ritual. The biggest development that came out of this was that everyone suddenly knew who YangYang was. They didn't all know his name, but they knew that one kid who doesn't go to class but showed up out of the blue at the ritual and nabbed a familiar. The court of public opinion was divided on whether this was uncool, or very very cool.

Regardless, one of the people who ran the academy's fashion blog flagged him down for an interview, and the week after the post came out, Renjun saw an unusual amount of students sporting the same red-tinted sunglasses YangYang had been wearing.

Every now and then, Sicheng left a dead bird on Renjun's windowsill. "Have to keep up the cat act," he said. Renjun knew he did it to be irritating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a wee bit late but here's the update!  
> yeah also the title doesn't really have to do with the contents of this chapter, i just couldn't think of one haha


	27. instinct

Jeno sank his teeth into the side of Renjun’s shoulder. It wasn’t as good as his neck, where his lifeblood pulsed strongest. Jeno could still envision that one time Renjun had tilted his head back and bared his slender neck, all of his own volition. But when Renjun’s blood ran over his tongue, he couldn’t complain.

Jeno savored the way Renjun’s breath caught, the way he dug his fingers into Jeno’s hair without realizing it. Jeno liked it more than he could remember liking feeding, maybe more than he should.

Then there it was again, that feather light touch against his aura that he now recognized as Renjun. It called to him, asking him to give. The scary part was that when it asked, he wanted to give.

But it never asked for much. Sometimes it lapped up a tendril of his power, and when Jeno felt it go, he opened his eyes just so he could watch Renjun’s eyes flash orange yellow, a strange contentment Renjun wasn’t aware of running over his face. Sometimes, Renjun’s tongue darted out to wet his lip.

Sometimes, like today, Renjun didn’t take anything from him at all. Jeno was a little disappointed.

“You are taking the blood supplements I gave you, right?” Jeno asked.

“Yeah,” Renjun said, but he didn’t quite look at Jeno.

Jeno narrowed his eyes. “Every day?”

“Sometimes,” Renjun mumbled. 

“You have to take them consistently.”

“Okay, okay,” Renjun said, still without looking at him.

“Renjun.”

“Okay, I will. You don’t have to worry about it.”

Jeno couldn’t tell how serious Renjun was, but he knew that was as much as he’d get out of him. Jeno was annoyed that he found himself worrying about Renjun, but it was hard not to. Renjun was terrible at self-care, to the point where Jeno wasn’t sure he had inherited the self-preservation instincts humans were supposed to have. He routinely lost or forgot the supplements, and would let Jeno take too much blood if he didn’t stop himself.

Just last week, Renjun had pulled an all-nighter and still had the gall to try to get Jeno to feed on him when he was walking around like a zombie. Jeno had to refuse—he wasn’t about to land himself with the criminal offense of draining a witch dry, even if it was at their own behest. So Jeno got no blood, and he somehow ended up walking Renjun home because there was reasonable doubt that Renjun would make it there by himself. All he got for his trouble was a story of how Donghyuck got caught picking his nose during first year, which Renjun found hilarious but Jeno just thought he didn’t need to know. Most of the story didn’t even have anything to do with the nose-picking. Jeno may have traded back a story about Jaemin. A much better one, if he did say so himself.

Renjun had barely been able to keep his eyes open by the time they reached his front door.

“We don’t usually talk like this,” he’d said. “It’s kind of nice?” Then he’d yawned and disappeared into his apartment without giving Jeno a chance to respond.

* * *

Sicheng hovered at Renjun’s side in cat form as Renjun inspected his eyes in the mirror. Sicheng sat on the bathroom countertop, his tail curling dangerously close to Renjun’s toothbrush.

Renjun had taken a bit of Jeno’s energy again earlier. It was getting harder and harder to stop himself. Harder still when Jeno didn’t try to stop him. As Renjun had suspected, the gold flecks in his eyes were back in full force.

“If you aren’t doing this to me, then who is?” Renjun demanded.

Sicheng leapt down from the counter, his body stretching out as he leapt, until he was in full humanoid form by the time he landed. “Who says anyone is doing this to you?” Sicheng asked.

“I wasn’t able to use magic like this before, and I didn’t want to take energy from people—no, I couldn’t.”

Sicheng raised one slender brow. “You couldn’t? Really.”

Renjun flashed back to the first time he’d fought Jae, the duel in the auditorium where Jae’s energy had hovered so tantalizingly within reach. But it wasn’t like he’d taken any, that time. “I don’t think I could have,” Renjun said, but Sicheng must have heard the uncertainty in his voice.

Sicheng maneuvered himself in front of Renjun, blocking Renjun’s reflection in the mirror. “Don’t lie to yourself about what you can and can’t do,” he said. “How were you able to use magic before this? Let me guess. Barely at all, or only if you took so much you couldn’t control it?”

Cupped palms dipping into magic flashed in Renjun’s mind, a distant past. How did Sicheng know? Renjun bit the question back. It felt like too much of a give away.

“I figured out how to control it,” Renjun said. Sort of.

Sicheng’s eyes widened with interest at that. “Really? How?”

Renjun pulled up his sleeve. There was still the faint line of a scar from one of times he’d used blood. “I used my blood.”

Sicheng’s lip curled downward. “Okay. I see how that could work, even if I don’t like that you had to do that.”

“You get how that could work…?”

“Yes. Think of your human side as a chain that binds your magic. Normally not much magic can make it past this chain, or you have to use too much magic for you to control to break through. But if there is a catalyst that loosens the chain, then you can overcome the limitations of your human side. Your blood is full of your life energy, so it worked as a catalyst. The energy you absorb is another, more natural one.”

“A...catalyst.”

“A key to release the chain that binds you.”

“You’re acting like I need to take other people’s energy to use magic.” Renjun searched Sicheng’s face for a reaction that would tell him otherwise, but Sicheng looked more pleased than anything else that Renjun had reached this conclusion. Renjun’s voice was weak when he said, “That sounds wrong.”

Sicheng cupped Renjun’s face in his palm. Renjun eyed the claws now too close to his eyeballs. “Your body wants to take from others what you do not have yourself. It’s instinct, and instinct is not right or wrong. And now that you’ve followed your instinct once, it’s instinct for you to do it again.”

“How do I stop it?”

“You can’t. But you can control it. I can show you how.”

Renjun didn’t reply. Sicheng’s eyes glimmered.

* * *

Chenle should’ve been paying attention to what the others were saying. It was something important, with a capital I. Coordinates and journals and what not.

Chenle watched Jisung, who was listening intently and nodding along. Jisung was good at paying attention like that. It was what made him a menace at remembering details he could use against you later.

It was funny that with how much Jisung noticed, he hadn’t noticed them drifting apart. Chenle supposed that was how drifting apart worked. It happened under the radar like that, in a series of increments, each of them a step below anyone’s notice. Going to different intermediate academies, making new friends, not talking as often because homework and extracurriculars and new social obligations. Hearing about Jisung’s accomplishments from his own parents instead of Jisung for the first time. Not being able to tell Jisung how his social life at school took a nosedive when he no longer had the clout of being ‘Jisung’s friend’.

Waking up one day to a phone call and realizing it was the first time they had talked in months. In a way Chenle was grateful for those intermediate years. They’d given him clarity—in others’ eyes he’d always been Jisung’s servant and not his friend. It hadn’t mattered when they were little, but they weren’t little anymore.

A knock on the door interrupted Chenle’s train of thought.

“It’s unlocked,” Donghyuck called over. “You’re late, Jeno…”

They all turned when they heard two sets of footsteps instead of one. Doyoung followed Jeno into the living room.

“Doyoung, Donghyuck. Donghyuck, Doyoung. I think the rest of you have met?” Jeno said. Jaemin and Jisung greeted Doyoung like an old friend.

Donghyuck straightened in his seat, almost knocking over the cup on his armrest. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but why are you here?”

“He’s here to help us,” Jeno said.

Donghyuck beckoned Jeno over. “Jeno, come here for a sec.” They huddled, and none too discreetly, Donghyuck said, “Are you sure he’s up for this? Could trigger traumatic memories and all that.”

“I can hear you,” Doyoung said.

Jeno jerked his head up guiltily. “Sorry,” Donghyuck said. He didn’t sound sorry.

“It’s fair that you’re concerned. You can only take my word that I’m well enough,” Doyoung said.

“You’re fine,” Jeno said fiercely. “All the doctors and professors said so.”

Doyoung gave Jeno a small smile. “Thanks, Jeno. I may not have all my memories, but you can trust me when I say I couldn’t be better otherwise. They’ve let me start attending training squadron briefings again, if that helps your peace of mind. As for why I’m here, I’ve been telling Jeno that it’s not wise to charge in as a big group, but since you’re probably not going to listen to that—”

“We’re not,” Donghyuck said.

“—at least I can come with you to protect you. I can’t let you kids go into danger on your own, and I know this forest better than any of you.”

They looked at each other and nodded, Donghyuck with a little more reluctance than the rest. They’d be safer if they had an experienced vampire like Doyoung along, and he did know the forest better than them.

“If we get caught, I’m pinning it on you,” Donghyuck said.

Doyoung made an exasperated noise, his patience with Donghyuck finally coming to an end. Chenle was impressed it’d lasted that long. “Fine.”

“Then welcome to the team,” Donghyuck said. Chenle muffled a snort.

Donghyuck passed Doyoung the map he’d pulled up on his phone, with an icon dropped over the point of Kun’s coordinates. Doyoung zoomed in on the icon, and used one finger to trace a circle around it. “This is the area the professors patrol. They briefed the training squadrons on it because they considered having some of us to patrol with them. But since everyone who disappeared is from the training squadrons, they decided it was too risky. They have two professors patrolling most of the time, probably witch professors now because it’s night. I suggest that we split up and approach from different sides so that it’s easier for us to avoid detection, and so that if some of us are caught, the rest won’t be.”

They decided to split into three groups. Chenle, Renjun, and Doyoung would go the long way around to the back. It wasn’t stated, but it was obvious that they were putting together the most experienced vampire with the most defenseless of them. Chenle appreciated that they didn’t say it aloud. Jaemin and Jisung would approach from one side at the front, and Donghyuck and Jeno from the other. If they encountered trouble, Jisung and Chenle could communicate through their mind link, and Donghyuck could send up a flare. The flare was a last resort though, because it’d mean the gig was up.

They left the apartment and piled into Doyoung’s car. It was a five seater, so two of them had to crouch on the floor, wedged between the others’ knees. Renjun didn’t get a choice. The rest of them roshamboed it out, with the loser getting the other floor seat and the winner getting shotgun. Chenle lost.

“You should have said you had a car. I would’ve let you in the team right away,” Donghyuck said.

As they drove, Chenle saw Jeno absently slide his hand through Renjun’s hair and Renjun lean into the touch. It happened in the span of a second. He wondered if either of them noticed.

They parked by the side of the road, as close to the coordinates as they could get without going off road. Chenle scrambled to get out of the car. His poor back. Sure, he had vampire healing powers, but that didn’t mean it should suffer this kind of abuse. Once they’d gotten out, Doyoung started to repeat the plan and Chenle stopped listening. He assumed he could rely on Doyoung to take them where they were supposed to go.

_Good luck._ Chenle was surprised to hear Jisung’s voice. On the surface it looked like Jisung was paying attention, with his eyes directed straight ahead at Doyoung. Without turning, Jisung lifted one hand at his side in a fist.

_You too,_ Chenle thought back, and he was surprised by himself because he sincerely meant it. He raised his own fist and bumped it against Jisung’s.

_You think this is what it’ll be like when we’re on training squadron missions?_ The excitement in Jisung’s voice would have been infectious if Chenle felt at all the same way.

_I won’t know because I’m not going to be on training squadron missions._

_You and Renjun could make it, you just need to practice more._

_Jisung, neither of us is planning to join the training squadrons._

Jisung’s mouth dropped open. “Chenle.” Jaemin eyed them curiously, and Jisung snapped his mouth shut.

_If you don’t join a training squadron, you can’t work for my family._

_Yeah, uh, about that…_

The link went quiet for a long time, snapped off. The problem with the link was that even when it was closed off, it wasn’t completely dead. Chenle could feel a swirling hint of turmoil from the other side, though he couldn’t tell if it was indignation, betrayal, or something else altogether. He even felt bad about it, and then felt bad about feeling bad. He didn’t have anything to apologize for.

_You never told me that._

_You never asked._ When could Jisung have asked, when they hadn’t been talking much? It was easier to let it show over the link, the slow build up of his feelings over the years, the resentments, the insecurities. 

He answered Jisung’s unspoken question. _It’s not because of you, Jisung._ Maybe once it was, but not anymore. It was nice to feel Jisung’s relief. _I want to find my own place, not the one this society has chosen for me._

He cut off the link. _Even,_ he thought to himself, _if it means leaving you behind._

The thought hurt a little more now than it had a month ago.

* * *

Renjun followed Doyoung and Chenle through the thickets of the trees. He tried to step where they did, but even so he wasn’t as silent as they were. He could tell they had to slow down for him.

“Don’t worry. There’s no rush,” Doyoung said, as if he could read Renjun’s mind.

Sicheng padded by Renjun’s side in cat form. He didn’t have trouble moving silently. They meandered upward in that near silence. Renjun couldn’t tell one patch of trees from the next, but Doyoung seemed to know where they were going. Renjun focused on not tripping over his feet. He didn’t know how much time had passed when Chenle halted in front of him. He would have run into Chenle if Doyoung’s hand didn’t come out to steady him.

“Jisung says he and Jaemin got there already,” Chenle said. “And…” Chenle closed his eyes. “He says there’s nothing there.” His forehead crinkled. “He says it smells like blood…”

A wind blew past them, and the trees rustled.

“Oh, it’s not recent. Old blood.”

“Maybe we should head back, if there’s nothing,” Renjun said. The wind was strangely cold for a summer night, and a shiver ran down his spine.

“We’ve already come this far. We can at least see it for ourselves,” Doyoung said. “Come on.”

They continued on until they stepped out into a clearing, and at first Renjun thought it was their destination, but none of the others were there. Doyoung continued determinedly forward. The wind had stopped, but Renjun thought he continued to hear rustling every couple of steps. A wild animal?

Renjun put a hand on Doyoung’s arm. “Doyoung, I don’t—”

“We’re almost there.” Doyoung put a hand on his wrist and pulled him along. Renjun didn’t hear any more of the rustling. Maybe they’d scared it off.

They had made it halfway across the clearing when Professor Park stepped out into the grass in front of them.

They halted in place. Chenle cursed softly. Doyoung’s grip around Renjun’s wrist tightened to a painful vice. “Doyoung,” Renjun protested, but Doyoung didn’t seem to hear him. Renjun tried to shake Doyoung’s hand off, but his fingers were solid as a manacle.

The shadows of the leaves shifted around Park’s face. His lips stretched, and Renjun saw the shine of pearly white teeth. 

“Thank you, Doyoung,” Park said.

Doyoung pulled Renjun in front of him, toward Professor Park.

“Doyoung,” Chenle whispered.

“Give me Jaehyun first,” Doyoung said.

“Doyoung, what are you saying?” Chenle said.

Moonlight glistened off wetness on Doyoung’s cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Chenle rushed toward Renjun, but Professor Park shot out a hand. A stream of wind mixed with darkness hit Chenle in the chest, and he flipped backward. He tumbled, limbs twisting over one another, a rag doll that bounced against the ground with three dull thumps. Renjun wanted to scream, but the sound choked off in his throat. He could see the darkness now, pulsing around Professor Park, casting shadows that weren’t from the trees. Tendrils of it curled into the night sky.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt them,” Doyoung shouted.

“I haven’t. Not permanently.” Park’s voice had an odd doubling effect, a silky undercurrent like another voice speaking at the same time.

“You can’t listen to him,” Renjun said, pulling at his wrist frantically. “He’s possessed. A demon—”

Professor Park’s face contorted. “I’m not possessed,” he spat, slamming his fist into the side of the tree next to him. The top of his hair flopped over his forehead. His face glistened with the sheen of sweat. He took a long breath, pushed the hair out of his face, and rolled his shoulders back. “I control the demon. It doesn’t control me. They are possessed.” He spread out his hands, and four figures walked into the clearing. Their movements were jerky and their bodies gaunt, the bones jutting out.

Doyoung dropped Renjun’s wrist. He staggered toward the least emaciated of the four. “Jaehyun?” The figure stared straight ahead, dull, glassy eyes void of recognition. “Jaehyun.”

“Now isn’t that a touching reunion?” Park said, and with a wave of his hand, Jaehyun’s eyes cleared.

Renjun darted toward Chenle. Behind him, he heard a voice raspy from lack of use. “Doyoung, don’t come any closer.” Renjun got to Chenle’s side and knelt down beside him. Chenle stirred, but his eyes didn’t open.

“Doyoung, stay back!” Renjun whipped around at the guttural cry, in time to see Doyoung run toward Jaehyun, his arms outstretched. Jaehyun’s arm made an uncoordinated marionette move, jerking back and then forward.

The knife went straight into Doyoung’s chest. Doyoung gasped, lurched forward, and fell to his knees. Something between Jaehyun and Doyoung cracked.

Energy burst out of the crack, and siphoned into the darkness filling Park. Renjun couldn’t tell if it was even Park anymore, or a shell of his former self that still wore his likeness and his arrogance. Whatever it was, it raised its arms, head raised toward the sky in bliss while Jaehyun moaned beside it. The moan dissolved into big gasping sobs.

Park waved a hand again, and the sobbing cut off. Jaehyun’s eyes unfocused again, leaving only trails of tears that continued to run down his cheeks.

Park’s attention returned to Renjun. “Now are you going to come here, or do I have to make you?”

Renjun didn’t move.

Park shrugged, and raised his hand again. Blackness shot out toward them. Renjun blanketed Chenle’s body with his own. He thought of every lesson on barrier magic that they’d learned, but images of Doyoung crumpling to the ground and Chenle flying kept playing over against the back of his eyelids, and though his magic flared outward, it wouldn’t coalesce into any kind of shield. It just kept stretching out across the clearing, until he could feel each dot of energy of the four figures, Chenle’s energy weak but persistent, Doyoung’s dot of energy fading fast, and darkness everywhere around them. He could feel black thorned cages within the figures, without being able to explain how he could feel it, and a different kind of darkness within Park himself. Black tendrils were entangled in his magic, as if they’d taken root inside him. Renjun couldn’t explain how he could feel that either.

Renjun could feel it all, and it was useless. The darkness came toward them still. He couldn’t stop it.

He closed his eyes, and braced for impact.

Another more familiar darkness unfurled in front of him. Renjun’s eyes flickered open to see Sicheng kneeling in front of them. Sicheng raised a hand, and the darkness hit the center of his palm. Sicheng’s face twisted, the first sign of pain Renjun had ever seen on him. He swayed, and had to lean on his other hand for support, but he kept his hand up. The darkness began to disappear into his open palm.

“I can’t hold him off,” Sicheng said through gritted teeth. “Renjun, remember what I said. Instinct is not right or wrong. Follow your instincts.”

The rest of the darkness disappeared into Sicheng’s hand, but he wasn’t able to hold himself up anymore. He tipped over to his side, and lay on the ground, twitching, curled in a fetal position.

Renjun raised his head. Chenle lay behind him and Sicheng in front. Park stood across from them in the clearing, ringed by the four unmoving figures and Doyoung’s unmoving body. Park held out a hand. “Come.”

Renjun rose shakily to his feet. He didn’t really feel his feet moving, but they must have been because Park’s face and that sickening smile kept getting closer. Step by step, getting closer to ending up like Doyoung.

Darkness and energy surrounded him. His own, his friends’, these strangers’, and clearest of all, Park’s. He sensed four other specks of energy somewhere in the distance, speeding their way. Chenle must have gotten the word to Jisung before he went down. A little farther than that, another speck. Could have been the other patrolling professor. All too far to save them.

Renjun stopped in front of Park, who still held out his hand. Renjun lifted his arm from his side, and slid his own hand into Park’s.

With his palm against Park’s, Park’s energy coalesced to a singular clarity. None of Park’s defenses were up, and Renjun soon sensed why—he could detect those tendrils of darkness within Park stirring. Park was making it easy for them to get out. Renjun flinched violently.

Park smiled at that, but Renjun didn’t see how he could smile, when an ancient, uncaring hunger was unfurling within him. A hunger that cared nothing for one man, that whispered of corruption, of conquest, of cities laid to waste. The tendrils uncurled themselves slowly, lazily, and trailed down toward the connection of their skin.

But they’d take some time to arrive. For now, it was just Park’s energy against his palm, and even in the face of his mounting terror, Renjun felt a tug from deep within his gut, akin to hunger.

Just as Park unleashed the darkness, Renjun sent out his magic. He knew he’d be faster. It came so naturally the second time around. Instinct.

His magic curled around Park’s energy, and began to devour. Park’s energy was nothing like Jae’s. It was much brighter and hotter, and coursed through him like liquid fire.

As Park’s energy drained into him, the dark tendrils began to shake where they were rooted in Park’s magic. Then, with a small sickening pop, one strand pulled itself out of his magic entirely. After that the rest of the tendrils started to follow, pulling out strand by strand, leaving holes in their place. Their progress toward Renjun slowed, and came to a halt. Park’s smile vanished. His eyes bulged, and he shoved Renjun away from him, almost tearing his hand from Renjun’s grasp.

Both of them stumbled backward. The connection between them cut out, and Park’s energy stopped draining into him. Renjun’s skull pounded with confusion. He wanted to reach for Park again. No—he was supposed to want...to get away? But Park’s energy was so vibrant. It’d be a shame to stop. But he was supposed to stop—stop? Stop. Continuing would be bad. He knew that from last time. Last time—

Last time he had finished it all, every last drop, and it still hadn’t been enough. Last time—

Last time Jeno had been afraid of him.

Renjun stilled where he stood. He saw Park snarling at him, and staggering forward, fire curling around his fingertips. Renjun was too disoriented to be afraid, even though he suspected that if he didn’t get a move on soon he’d be burned beyond recovery.

Park never reached him. Before Renjun’s eyes, the dark tendrils in Park finished extracting themselves from him. They surrounded him, unmoving at first, radiating that terrible, ancient hunger. Then they devoured what remained of his insides.

Renjun couldn’t have stopped it even if the thought to try had crossed his mind. The thought didn’t cross his mind. His mind was blank aside from a swooping sensation close to nausea.

There Park was, emptying out before him, and Renjun was jealous.

The darkness condensed out of Park behind his back, into the form of man shrouded in shadows. Renjun couldn’t see the man’s face. The cages of thorns in the four figures around them shattered one by one, and one by one, they fell to the ground. Park fell last. The shadowed man withdrew, running into the forest.

The world tilted, and cool softness met Renjun’s body. _Grass,_ he thought.

His head spun. He tried to pull himself in the direction of Sicheng and Chenle, but the over saturated world stabbed daggers through his eyes. He squeezed them shut and lay still for a while, before dragging himself forward with his eyes closed.

Grass bent by his head, and a pair of cool, clawed fingers touched his eyelids. The pain lessened.

That was how the others found them, with Renjun inching his way across the ground, his cat at his side, everyone else lying motionless around them.

* * *

Renjun sat huddled on the ground. Someone had draped a blanket around him. His vision had cleared a while ago, though his eyes still watered. He still felt too sensitive to everything, from the people passing by around him to the blades of grass scratching the underside of his legs. There was a gradually receding ache in the back of his head.

Sicheng sat in his lap. Renjun ran a hand through Sicheng’s fur again and again. The repetitive motion helped, and Sicheng didn’t seem to mind.

Renjun heard voices around him, professors and others, though he couldn’t bring any single one into focus. Chenle and the others on the ground had been carried out on stretchers.

Too many people had asked if he was okay.

He’d given a vague statement to the professors that he didn’t recall all the details of. In broad strokes, it’d been that Doyoung had led them there, that Park had attacked them, that there’d been a demon inside him, and that the demon had overwhelmed him, in the end.

They didn’t make him repeat himself.

Now Renjun sat bracketed by his friends, his head resting on one of their shoulders, one of their arms around his shoulder. Someone, probably Jaemin, talked about nothing in particular in low, soothing tones. Someone else, probably Jisung, shifted from foot to foot at the side.

* * *

The official announcement came out to the entire academy the next evening. They’d interrogated Park—no details on how—and somber-eyed professors stood in front of the students in the central courtyard to deliver the news. Many of them didn’t look like they’d gotten much sleep.

Professor Seo did most of the talking. He called it a tragedy and a failure of all of the administration in the most important of their duties—protecting the youth.

“I will tell you the whole truth because I believe that is what you deserve. Mr. Park attempted to weaken the Seal. His methods utilized illegal blood magic from breaking training squadron pair bonds. He has been uncovered as an anti-vampire radical, who believed he could summon one of the greater demons, control it, and wield its power to subjugate vampires. What he did is inexcusable, but for our blindness to it, we are to blame. These three deaths are on our heads.”

Professor Seo recited their names, and lowered his head. All the professors, and everyone in the courtyard lower their heads. They had a moment of silence. 

Renjun didn’t recognize any of the names, but he knew now that they were all vampires. Theirs was the blood that Jisung had smelled at Kun’s coordinates. It was obvious now that Kun’s coordinates were the location of the Seal, though none of his friends had seen the Seal itself.

After what’d happened, Renjun and his friends got off without punishment for snooping on Kun’s journal. It hardly mattered. Renjun didn’t think there could be a worse punishment than Professor Koon’s disappointment when she saw him.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Park did succeed in bringing a demon past the Seal. We have no reason to believe it is one of the greater demons, but when it overwhelmed him, it was able to escape. In light of this, we understand if some of you wish to return home. Please inform your parents, and make a decision as soon as possible.”

They ended by saying that Doyoung, Chenle, and the other four had survived. It didn’t do much to lift the mood.

* * *

Renjun opened the door. Jeno stood outside, holding a metal can in one hand. “I thought you could use some company,” he said. Donghyuck had been called out to give another account of what he’d seen. Renjun wondered if Donghyuck had messaged some group chat without Renjun and told someone to come over, or if Jeno had come over of his own volition. It was as if Renjun were a child who couldn’t be left to his own devices.

Maybe he couldn’t. He hadn’t gotten out of the shirt he’d slept in, and his hair stuck out from the back of his head because he hadn’t fixed it after waking up. He’d forgotten to eat dinner.

“I could use some fresh air,” Renjun said.

Jeno nodded. Renjun threw on a jacket and followed Jeno down the stairs.

They sat down on the curb of the sidewalk, and Jeno passed the can over to him.

Renjun snorted when he took it. “I don’t even like soda,” he said, but he cracked the top open and took a large gulp.

“What do you like?”

“Tea, mostly.” It didn’t taste any better than usual, but he took another gulp. Maybe sugar, carbonation, and artificial orange were what he needed right then. “You want something to drink too?” Renjun teased, hooking a finger in the collar of his shirt.

Jeno’s eyes widened, before he shook his head. He took hold of Renjun’s hand in his own, and pulled it down. “That’s not funny right now, Renjun,” he said.

They lapsed into silence. The artificial orange left a weird taste in the back of Renjun’s throat. He let the can dangle between his fingers.

Jeno shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m sorry about what Doyoung did. I shouldn’t have brought him.”

Renjun put the can down on the curb. “I don’t blame you, Jeno.”

“Shouldn’t you? He wasn’t well. I should have known something was off.”

Renjun angled his body toward Jeno and put a hand on his shoulder, forcing Jeno to turn his way. “It’s not your fault.”

Jeno turned one of his hands over in the other. “Okay,” he said, his voice thick. Before Renjun could stop him, he picked up the can of soda and chugged a full mouthful. A beat later, his face twisted and he spat half of it back out on the sidewalk. Jeno lifted the soda can and stared at it as if it’d personally attacked him.

“Are you...an idiot?” Renjun bent over, unable to hold in his laughter.

Jeno’s indignant protest made him laugh harder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not the longest chapter, but a lot happens (i think? that's how it feels to me but i kinda lose track by the time i get to the end of a chapter haha)


	28. the way home

Chenle woke with a dull ache in his chest. Lights overhead filtered through his half-open eyes and he winced. His throat was dry enough that it felt like he hadn’t fed in days.

“Chenle? You feeling okay?”

Chenle’s eyes cracked open a fraction more. He tried to reply and say he was okay, and tried at the same time to lift a hand to block out the light. He was unable to either.

“…bright,” he managed.

He heard a shuffle of feet, and the room plunged into darkness. The feet shuffled back.

“I left it on in case the doctors were going to come back. They just left.”

Chenle turned his head and peered at Jisung in the soothing darkness. It was weird waking up with Jisung at his bedside, which hadn’t happened since they were maybe 10 years old. Weirder still that this Jisung acted the same, eyes round with concern, rubbing one hand over the other because he never was much good at keeping still. Just older now. Larger hands, a deeper voice, and the same concern that peeked out of the eyes of a 10 year old—filled with fear that he might die from a scrape.

“Doctors,” Chenle repeated.

“And Renjun and Donghyuck. There’s been a lot of doctors. You weren’t in good shape.”

The idea of Donghyuck coming in to see him in this shape was equal parts hilarious and humiliating, and it drew a shaky laugh out of his throat. And okay, ow, that hurt. The ache in his chest wasn’t as dull as he thought, not when he moved. And Renjun—

“Renjun’s okay? Doyoung, he—” Chenle made an attempt to rise, and the ache flared into hot spikes of pain.

Jisung’s eyes widened more in alarm. “Renjun’s fine,” Jisung said quickly. “Everyone’s okay. They got it all handled. Doyoung’s…he’s there.”

Only then did Chenle notice the other hospital beds around him. Doyoung lay on the bed farthest from Chenle. Four others occupied the beds between them. Chenle realized with a start—and another painful twinge in his chest—that the emaciated face of the one closest to Doyoung was Jaehyun’s. All four of those lying in the beds between him and Doyoung were hollow cheeks and bird-like bones, and it took a long time for Chenle to match each face to one he’d seen before in the training squadrons.

“What happened?” Chenle asked.

“That witch professor happened.” Jisung spat ‘witch professor’ with revulsion. Chenle remembered the professor, but not much else afterward. “I don’t know how someone could hate us so much that they’d summon a demon.”

“Hate us?”

“That’s why he did all this, kill training squadron members, try to break the Seal, summon a _demon_ , attack you. Because he hates vampires enough that he’d deal with a demon just to bring us down.”

“He killed them?”

“Technically he used the demon to have one of them kill the other. Donghyuck said that the power from breaking the pair bond, and the blood from death let him do blood magic powerful enough to wear down the Seal.”

Chenle shuddered. “Why didn’t he kill us? How did we make it back alive?”

Jisung lowered his head. “You almost didn’t,” he said, quiet and low. Chenle hadn’t seen Jisung like this in a long time. “The professor lost control of the demon at the last minute, and it left. If it hadn’t…”

“Were you afraid I wasn’t going to make it?”

Jisung’s head jerked up. “Of course I was!” The remnants of fear pounded against their mind link, though this time it was Jisung keeping it closed. “I was terrified.” Jisung put his face in his hands, and Chenle didn’t know what to do.

* * *

It wasn’t common knowledge that Doyoung had tried to turn Renjun over to Park. The professors knew, and their group knew.

“I don’t get it,” Jaemin said. “Why would he want you?”

They walked together down the path to mixed class. In the distance someone shoved someone else to the dirt. The person who fell shot back a whip of explosive light that probably blinded them both. Even in Renjun’s eyes the lights left blue afterimages.

One of them was shouting. “My cousin’s dead, you sick fuck.”

“That’s not my fault…”

A hand looped over Renjun’s shoulder and guided his head away. Renjun hadn’t noticed that he’d stopped to watch. “Come on,” Jaemin said. It wasn’t the first time Renjun had seen a scene like that since coming back to campus. It wasn’t rare, not anymore.

Jaemin’s touch was gentle, the kind reserved for small, spooked animals. Renjun brushed his hand off, none too gently. He walked ahead faster, and Jaemin had to jog a little to catch up.

His friends hadn’t left him alone much since that night. Maybe they had a schedule going, and now it was Jaemin’s turn to babysit him. Outdoors they had an excuse—the new academy rules said that no one was supposed to wander around alone. Indoors they showed up at regular intervals, claiming to want to hang out. A flimsy excuse at best, and if he didn’t know it was an excuse he’d be resentful that they hadn’t wanted to hang out before this happened. It was suffocating.

Sometimes he retreated into his room just to have room to breathe. Even then, Sicheng was there. But at least with Sicheng there was no unspoken question hanging nebulous in the air between them.

_Are you okay?_

Renjun didn’t know why he was getting this treatment, when compared to everyone else who’d been there, he was the most okay. He hadn’t ended up in a hospital bed.

“Why would he want you?” Jaemin asked again, and Renjun realized he’d never answered the first time.

Renjun let the question flatline again into silence. Unlike Donghyuck, Jaemin wouldn’t push him for a response. Deflecting would be easy, an ‘I don’t want to talk about this’ enough.

But Renjun didn’t think Jaemin deserved that. Or maybe he was simply tired, and that amounted to the same thing. It was strange to think that he trusted Jaemin enough that the thought would even cross his mind. Life had been strange, lately.

“It’s because I’m half-human.” Renjun didn’t give Jaemin time to question it, or even turn. He plunged straight on into the easy part, a regurgitation of what the professors had concluded. “They think that since demons can possess humans and Park was losing his grip on the demon, maybe Park wanted to transfer the demon into me. The half human part would make me easier to control, and the half witch part would give them magic, which would be a bonus.”

Renjun bit his lip. They’d stopped walking. Jaemin turned to him and held his gaze evenly. Renjun waited for it to change into disgust, or worse, pity, but it didn’t.

All he said was, “That makes a lot of sense.”

They continued walking until Jaemin’s expression darkened, and he halted in the middle of the path. “Let’s go,” he said, pulling Renjun in the other direction, but Renjun followed his gaze to two figures still far from them. Doyoung and Jaehyun were sitting on a bench together. Neither of them appeared in great shape.

Renjun let Jaemin drag him away, but not before he caught a glimpse of the two smiling at each other despite the injuries, the jagged smiles of survivors. Renjun couldn’t bring himself to be mad.

Renjun couldn’t bring himself to feel much about either of them. What he did feel was Jaemin’s energy flush against the surface where his palm touched Renjun’s skin.

* * *

Renjun came back to an unfamiliar landscape when he returned to the creation magic hut on Monday. Neither Professor Koon nor YangYang questioned Renjun’s absence the previous week. Professor Koon knew everything—except that Renjun had absorbed Park’s energy. He’d told no one about that, and Park apparently hadn’t exposed him for it. Maybe he hadn’t known what was happening. YangYang knew as much as most of the school, so Renjun expected to find him burning up with curiosity, but he was unusually quiet. Renjun soon saw why.

The creation magic hut had been eviscerated. The ground was bare, and most of the supplies were missing. Professor Koon was packing up what remained into neat little boxes. Even her red tea kettle and aquarium tank were gone.

“What’s going on?” Renjun asked.

“We’ve been discovered by one of the vampire professors. They’re outraged of course, said we’re undermining the training squadrons. Of course that’s what it looks like now after what Park’s done.” Professor Koon rubbed a hand over her face, and stuffed several sheets of plastic viciously into a box. YangYang listlessly tossed a glass bead from hand to hand, while his automatons ran in wide loops around him. He was probably supposed to be helping, given the open box next to him, but he hadn’t moved from his spot since Renjun arrived. His familiar lay on the ground beside him. “In the beginning, I told them that we didn’t need all this secrecy, and now…”

“Now we’ve been shut down,” YangYang said, folding his arms over his knees and letting the glass bead roll out of his hand.

“Temporarily,” Professor Koon said, trying her best to sound like the reassuring adult, but not convincing any of them. “I’ll talk with the others. We’ll show them all we’ve done, and when they see that it’s all essential and doesn’t have anything to do with undermining anyone, I’m sure we’ll be reinstated. Until then, we won’t be having class.”

Renjun knelt down beside YangYang and started to pick up the glass beads around him.

“On the bright side, you and YangYang don’t have to hide what we do anymore. The secrecy spell has been revoked.” Professor Koon tried to smile at them. She didn’t make it far past a slight curl up in her lips.

“Because we aren’t doing anything anymore,” YangYang said into his arms.

* * *

Renjun took YangYang home with him after they cleaned out the hut. It didn’t feel much like they were leaving, because what they’d known had been put away piece by piece. The empty hut was already a stranger by the time they stepped out.

It was less taking YangYang home than manhandling deadweight. YangYang slouched and dragged his feet. YangYang’s pockets bulged with his automatons, which showed more life than him, their antennae twitching as they surveyed their surroundings.

Donghyuck had sent a message asking if they should meet up to head back together after class. Renjun sent him a one word no.

Renjun didn’t know how he hauled YangYang up the stairs and into his apartment. Sicheng was more than useless, and from the way his yellow cat eyes gleamed every time Renjun had to stop to take a break, he was laughing on the inside at Renjun’s struggles.

“You want water?” Renjun asked YangYang when he’d gotten him situated on the couch.

YangYang didn’t answer the question. He just drew his legs up on the couch. Renjun went into the kitchen and got some cups. He wanted water, even if YangYang didn’t.

When Renjun got back to the living room, YangYang hadn’t moved. “I came here for creation magic. If it’s gone, what’s here for me?” YangYang said tonelessly.

Renjun plunked a glass of water down in front of him. “We don’t know that it’s gone yet.”

“Yeah, and it’s so much better to wait in limbo until someone makes the decision and tells us it’s gone for real—ugh, sorry, I’m not trying to take this out on you.”

Renjun tapped his fingers on the table, not willing to believe that he was about to say this. “Who said we had to wait?” he said.

* * *

The metal roach stood in the center of Donghyuck’s palm, its little legs straight as if it were posing for an inspection. Its antennae flicked from side to side.

“This is so cool. How’d you make this?” Donghyuck asked. Renjun could have sworn the roach straightened further, probably the roach equivalent of puffing its chest out.

“You don’t want to get him started on that,” Renjun said. He’d been on the receiving end of one of YangYang’s spiels about material density and metal properties, so he knew what he was talking about.

Jisung sat huddled at the corner of the couch the furthest away from them. He’d been the first to enter and the first to see YangYang’s automatons. He’d also screeched and fallen over himself, to cackling laughter from Chenle and shared grins between Jaemin and Jeno. Renjun almost laughed too, but he was overtaken by relief to hear Chenle laughing again, even if it wasn’t as loud as usual.

“I hate cockroaches,” Jisung said, to no one in particular.

They’d set up a makeshift screen by covering the TV in white paper. “It’s about time,” YangYang said, and held out a hand. The cockroach skittered back to his hand from Donghyuck’s. Jisung shuddered at the side. YangYang was in much better spirits now that he had something to do, if the determined glint in his eye was anything to go by.

YangYang pressed the top of the cockroach’s head, and the projection began to play.

“You’ve really got to show me how this works sometime,” Donghyuck said.

They got through some blurry shadow shots, the automaton on the other side getting through shrubbery, meandered dangerously close to giant thundering shoes, and then they were in. The automaton went halfway up a wall, and into a corner.

A familiar set of one green and one brown eye appeared in the periphery. She didn’t look once at YangYang’s smallest, least shiny automaton, but she did move in front of them, as if blocking the automaton from others’ view.

More witch professors filed in, most in stiff, formal clothing unlike their usual attire. A quiet procession closer to a funeral than a professors’ meeting. The vampire professors arrived later and all at the same time. They didn’t wear the same formal clothing, though they were all dressed in black. Renjun wasn’t sure if that was their idea of formal, or if they liked to live up to every vampire movie stereotype of his youth. All except the woman in white at their forefront.

Someone inhaled sharply near Renjun.

“What is she doing here?” the professor closest to the camera hissed to the person on her right. “They aren’t supposed to—”

Professor Seo’s voice cut through the room. “Taeyeon, while it’s lovely to see you, may I inquire what your business is with us today? This is school business, a professor’s meeting. We don’t usually have others join us.”

Taeyeon didn’t sit, and none of the vampire professors did either. Renjun thought he could see Jao’s grainy head among the crowd. “You’ve got to improve the specs on this,” Renjun muttered to YangYang.

YangYang scowled, but didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “I make do with what I have,” he said.

Taeyeon said, “This stopped being school business the moment one of ours died. You must understand that given the circumstances, I’m considering if there’s still merit to supporting this academy.”

Professor Seo lowered his head, but his voice was firm. “Taeyeon, now that there’s a confirmed demon sighting, this academy is more important than ever. If we cannot teach the younger generation to work together, we will be in grave danger. We must have a united front.”

“Where was this sentiment when I asked the witches to investigate demon activity? It is odd to me that you tout unity now, when the danger this time came from one of yours. I’m not sure I believe any longer that the dangers outside this academy outweigh those within it.”

It was close to an accusation, though without the inflection of one. Renjun saw some of the professors near their side bristle.

Renjun had a hard time focusing. Ever since that night, his perception of energy had intensified somehow, sharpened to needle points that pricked at his skin. Energy tingled at the edge of his senses, from friends, from classmates, a constant low hum that he couldn’t switch off. It was like some low-level torture technique he’d inflicted on himself.

“I understand,” Professor Seo said. “Yet we both know that the witch-vampire pair bond is the best defense we have against demonic control. The fewer pairs that we have, the smaller our chances against any demon that chooses to attack us. And many of our current training squadron members will age out of their pair bonds soon.”

“The pair bond did not save those three,” Taeyeon said. “Nor do I care to put our children in danger again.”

Professor Seo lowered his head again, but this time it looked closer to defeat. “That was our fault. We did not account for Park working in league with a demon. Nor do any of us want to put any children in danger.”

“I do not care for your apologies, and I do not deny the importance of the pair bond. I said I do not care to put our children in danger again, but I didn’t say I do not understand the necessity. I care only about this—how do we know one of yours will not betray us again?” Taeyeon paused to let her words sink in, and to scan the crowd. “Show us your loyalty. Let us have our retribution. Give us Park.”

“I would have to talk to the head of—”

“I am not patient, Seo, but I will give you a day to think on this. Give us Park.”

Taeyeon swept out of the room, followed by the swath of vampire professors. Creation magic wasn’t even mentioned.

* * *

“Jeno,” Renjun said, moments before the vampire tapped his shoulder.

Jeno frowned. “How’d you know it was me?”

Renjun didn’t want to explain that Jeno’s energy stood out in a crowd, that he’d known who it was minutes ago when Jeno entered the room.

“You smell,” Renjun said.

“What? No I don’t,” Jeno said, offended. He tried to inconspicuously sniff at a sleeve. “I don’t smell.”

“I mean the smell of your shampoo, fool. It’s not bad.”

“You recognize the smell of my shampoo…?” Jeno wrinkled his nose in disgust, then his expression slid into something sly that Renjun didn’t like. “You think it smells good.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Do you think _I_ smell good?” Renjun covered Jeno’s mouth with his hand with the speed of a cobra and looked around furiously. Jeno grinned under his hand. When Renjun saw no one, he let go equally fast. He wanted to wipe the grin off Jeno’s face, but he wasn’t sure he could without embarrassing himself in the process.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Renjun said, and stalked off.

Jeno caught up to him easily. He couldn’t even let Renjun rage stalk away in peace. Renjun was starting to feel like he was getting the short end of this relationship.

“Is it your turn on Renjun watch duty?” Renjun asked, with no small amount of contempt. “Got nothing better to do?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Renjun leveled a glare at Jeno, and he raised his hands in surrender. “I’m joking. Besides, it’s school rules now. We aren’t supposed to walk around alone.”

“Who’s making sure Donghyuck and Jaemin aren’t walking around alone?”

“Donghyuck, probably. Unlike you, he’s got some self-preservation instincts in there.”

Renjun tried to step on Jeno’s foot, and missed. “I’ve got loads of self-preservation instincts—”

Missing Jeno’s foot led him to trip on a crack in the sidewalk, over a tuft of dandelion he swore hadn’t been there before. A cloud of dandelion seeds went flying, and Renjun saw Sicheng’s judgmental cat eyes as the world tilted. Then a hand caught his arm, hauled him up, and his world righted itself.

“See what I mean?” Jeno said.

Renjun glowered.

But he couldn’t keep up his anger for long, not when the heat of Jeno’s palm on his arm burned hotter than his irritation. Not physically. As always, Jeno’s palm was cool. It was the heat of his energy spiking next to Renjun’s skin. It started out a gentle warmth, but the longer it stayed against Renjun’s arm, the more the heat grew. It became prickly, reminiscent of an electric current, and soon Renjun couldn’t focus on anything else. Soon Renjun was reaching out toward that energy, drawn in inexorably without a single conscious thought. He wasn’t thinking when his magic hooked into that energy, and when it began to pour into him, didn’t start thinking until Jeno made a noise close to a whine.

Renjun came back to himself when Jeno shuddered against him, and wrenched his arm from Jeno’s grasp. The energy influx cut off when their contact broke, but Renjun felt threads of his magic still stretching out in the direction of that energy, in the direction of Jeno.

Renjun backed away from him.

“Sorry. I—Are you okay?”

Jeno shook the hair from his eyes and straightened up. He looked a little dazed but otherwise normal. Renjun breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m good,” Jeno said, and then threw that into doubt by giving a thumbs up in the wrong direction.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” Renjun said. But his magic was still reaching for Jeno. He took another step back.

“It’s okay,” Jeno said. “After all the blood I’ve gotten from you, makes it fair, right? Give and take.”

Renjun laughed weakly. Jeno’s words were colored by his guilt over Doyoung, and Renjun briefly wondered when the planes of Jeno’s face, the slight shift in his shoulders had become so familiar that Renjun could discern guilt. Jeno didn’t know how much Renjun wanted to take, or he wouldn’t have said that.

Still, even spoken in ignorance, the words left an odd feeling of warmth that sank down in Renjun’s chest and lodged there. Maybe he was getting sick or something.

* * *

Renjun didn’t have time to dwell on peculiar warm feelings or the sicknesses that were definitely their cause, because his phone pinged him on the way home.

A message from his mother.

_I heard the news. I’m coming to take you home Friday._

* * *

The rest of the week was spent in a frenzy of packing. Renjun had tried to argue with his mother, but he didn’t have much to go on when the demon had already targeted him once.

“I can’t believe you’re going,” Donghyuck said.

“Me neither.”

Renjun folded the last of his shirts and put it away. Donghyuck watched him from the doorway.

“Actually, I have something for you,” Renjun said. He searched through a large bag lying on the side near his bed, and pulled out an old painting. Even looking at it now, with the moment past, a surge of gentle happiness rose in his chest. He passed it to Donghyuck.

Donghyuck scanned the painting, and stilled when he saw himself and Renjun painted sitting on the rock. Renjun wasn’t sure Donghyuck would like it. The moment itself was an ordinary one, one of many moments, forgettable in the grand scheme of things. “I’m not big on art, but you got me this time. You got me,” Donghyuck said.

“I’ll miss you,” Renjun said.

“Don’t get all mushy on me now, Huang,” Donghyuck said, but he’d gone misty-eyed. He put down the painting and tackled Renjun in a hug. Hugging Donghyuck was somewhat like hugging a tidal wave—he was almost knocked over by the initial force, and then dragged under into its pull. He told himself that was why he was getting misty-eyed himself, as he wrapped his arms around Donghyuck. His magic reared its head, drawn out of slumber by Donghyuck’s fire bright closeness, but Renjun pushed it all the way back down.

“We’re going to have so much fun without you,” Donghyuck said. “Finally I can throw all the crazy parties of my dreams.”

“You do that and see if I don’t kill you when I get back.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

They hugged each other for a long time, to the point where it got awkward, then past it. Neither of them was willing to be the one to let go.

Renjun wasn’t the only one moving out. Some of their classmates had already left earlier in the week, though not many. There was a feeling of the world shifting around them, and their words left their mouths fragile and paper-thin though nothing had yet changed.

“I’ll miss you too, you doof,” Donghyuck said. “So you better be back soon.”

* * *

The feeling of the world shifting around him didn’t go away, even though they drove through the same streets and took the same turns as always. The trees hadn’t lost their leaves like in the winter, so it was through green lined streets and under blue skies that they traveled back to the place he hadn’t called home for years. The traffic was the same as always.

It was too beautiful a day for goodbyes.

Maybe Donghyuck thought so too, because he said, “See you soon” when Renjun left, like he was just slipping out for lunch.

Maybe that was why Renjun replied, “Yeah, I’ll see you later.”

It still sounded a lot like goodbye.

They both acted like they hadn’t had a going-away gathering the night before, and like Chenle hadn’t shed a tear when he asked when Renjun was coming back and got no response. Like they hadn’t all been quieter than usual. Like Renjun hadn’t hugged it out with all of them when he wasn’t much of a hugger, even with Jisung who approached it like a medieval torture. 

Renjun watched Donghyuck’s waving figure as they drew away from the curb. He thought the _objects are closer than they appear_ might be a lie, because the Donghyuck in the rear view mirror looked no closer than the one standing on the curb. Donghyuck was incredibly small by the time they turned the corner and went out of sight.

* * *

At the stop of a traffic light, Renjun watched people cross in front of their car. A child with an ice cream bar, melted rivulets running down his hand, chasing after some friends. A young man with a green and white baseball cap. A woman walking her dog.

“Now you don’t have to go back,” his mother said.

Renjun tore his gaze away from the disintegrating ice cream bar. “I thought you wanted me at the academy.”

“I didn’t want you to be there. You had to be there. A witch isn’t allowed to go around untrained. You think I wanted to send you among vampires?”

“Then why didn’t you send me to a different academy without vampires? Yeah, I know those exist now.”

His mother stared straight ahead, her finger tapping against the steering wheel. “You don’t understand, Renjun.”

“Because you won’t tell me anything!” Renjun snapped. He recoiled as soon as the words left his mouth, stunned. He didn’t snap like this, not at her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

His mother pressed her lips together. “I’ll tell you this, Renjun. I wish I’d had more of a choice. Most academies aren’t sympathetic to humans. I chose from the few academies that wouldn’t bind your magic and would keep your condition a secret from your peers. Out of those, this was the only one where the professors I talked to seemed to care more about your well-being than your potential as a research subject. They promised me you would be safe. They failed, obviously.”

Renjun turned back to the street. Call him a coward, but he didn’t know if he could keep this conversation going while looking at her. The man in the baseball cap stopped in front of their car, angled his head so that he appeared to be looking straight through their windshield, then continued walking.

“Why do you hate vampires so much?” Renjun asked.

“I don’t hate them. I’m just worried for you.”

“You lied to me. You said the vampire in the photo wasn’t your friend, but I asked Professor Koon, and I know he is now.”

His mother’s hands tightened. One finger continued to tap, tap, tap on the steering wheel. The man in the baseball cap had finished crossing the street, but he loitered there at the side, checking his phone. He seemed oddly in focus compared to the rest of the passerby, but maybe Renjun was just trying to distract himself.

“The past is unimportant. You remember when your father left?” Renjun’s mother said, her voice soft. Renjun tensed. Soft was dangerous, and Renjun didn’t know what answer she wanted. The truth or the lie? He was saved when she continued, “No, of course you don’t. You were too young. Your father left, but he would have come back. He always left but he always came back.”

The traffic light changed to green, and the cars around them began to surge forward.

“He would’ve come back that time too, if a vampire didn’t drain him dry. All because of a grudge against one of his ancestors from centuries ago. So no, I don’t have any vampire friends. Not anymore.”

“So you don’t want me to have any vampire friends either.”

She cupped his face in her hand. A car behind them honked.

“I just want you to be safe. Oh, that Chenle boy is fine. He’s not a threat, and I know you’re too smart to let a vampire drink from you.”

Renjun swallowed. “Y—yeah.”

“The academy should have been safe,” she said, more to herself than him. “I didn’t think demons would be back, not in our lifetime. If I had...”

“When I can go back to school?” Renjun asked.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” The car jerked forward, an involuntary press on the gas. “It’s not safe for you there. No one is safe around demons.”

Sicheng’s tail swished in the back seat. They drove away from the intersection. Renjun could still see the man in the cap in the rearview mirror, standing on the sidewalk’s edge.

* * *

Renjun couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was being watched, although he never saw the man in the baseball cap again. It was as if now that he was cloistered in the safety of his home, away from magic and blood and secrets hidden in the depths of the forest, boredom drove his mind to paranoia.

He didn’t have anyone attacking him, aside from Sicheng jumping him at god awful hours in the morning because he was excited to explore the human side of the city. By god awful hours, Renjun meant anytime before 10am.

He passed through the streets, one more face among the hundreds of others. His mother had set a curfew, but she didn’t restrict him otherwise. She knew he wouldn’t go too far. He knew no one cared enough to notice him, and that he was overthinking it when he thought otherwise. The footsteps that stepped too close behind him always passed him by. The girl at the ice cream shop counter that had stared at him funny had just been waiting for his order.

When Renjun moved past the people around him, he was surprised that he could feel them, not as bright flares of energy like witches and vampires, but softer, cooler flames. There were harder to distinguish, but so numerous it sometimes felt as if he were walking through a sea of stars.

Walking among them, but unable to feel like one of them. He stood still in the stream of their unceasing movement. Nowhere to go, no one to be. He ran some errands, took a couple shifts at the cafe, and tended the garden sometimes, but mostly he was free.

He and Sicheng stopped in front of the reflective glass of a storefront, and he stared at his and Sicheng’s reflection. Others passed around them in the glass. He wondered if he had changed from four years ago, before magic. He didn’t look much different. Older, a bit taller—less than he’d hoped—a new pet.

Here they were just a boy and his cat.

A man tripped as he passed them, dropping a bag of groceries on the ground. Renjun reached down to help him pick them up. When he passed the bag back to the man, their fingers brushed. That feather light touch was all it took for cavernous hunger to surge in Renjun’s blood and for his magic to flare. That soft flame that lurked beneath the man’s skin, that Renjun had so carelessly forgotten about, began to siphon into Renjun through his fingertips.

The man stumbled to one knee, holding his chest.

The groceries fell through Renjun’s fingers between them, landing with a thud on the ground. An apple rolled out from the top of the bag.

Renjun backed away, one step then another, until he melted into the forming crowd.

“You okay?” someone was saying.

“Yeah, just felt dizzy all of a sudden…”

“You sure you don’t need an EMT?”

Renjun turned and darted haphazardly through the stream of people, letting the voices fade behind him. Each body passed by with a flare of heat he didn’t want to feel, brighter and hotter now than before. Sicheng meowed somewhere behind him.

Renjun didn’t stop until he reached the old swing set near his home. He sat on the swing, gripping the half-rusted metal chain with one hand and staring down at the other.

He didn’t look up when he heard footsteps approaching. The sound was for his benefit—Sicheng would move in silence otherwise. Renjun curled his hand into a fist.

“Help me with this. Please.”

A dark clawed hand closed over his fist. “I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in contrast to the last chapter where many things happened, not a great deal happens in this one haha. hope it was a fun read anyway!
> 
> also for ppl who read the first version of ch 26 early before i edited it, you already knew his dad was dead, that was my mistake/spoiler i guess. but now (hopefully) everyone's on the same page


	29. ice cream

They were at the ice cream shop again. It was a hassle to get the ice cream, since the shop was 30 minutes from his mother's place at a speed walk. If Renjun had known how much the demon would take to ice cream of all things, he would never have brought Sicheng there.

It was an extra hassle to get somewhere Sicheng could transform back to his original form to eat the ice cream before it melted. Though Renjun supposed there were worse ways to pay a demon for his aid.

"Do all demons have a sweet tooth, or is that just you?" Renjun had asked once, a little sharp because the ice cream place was one of those speciality fancy flavor make-their-ice-cream-in-small-batches-the-day-of places, and it was priced like it. He'd tried taking Sicheng to a cheaper place closer to his house, one of those commercialized chains, and the demon had taken one bite, made a face, and complained the rest of the way home. Of course demons would only eat the most expensive ice cream known to man (or to Renjun at least). Renjun suspected that if Sicheng were a human, he'd be off purchasing luxury brands and racking up credit card debt. Truly the hallmark of evil.

Sicheng had shrugged. "I don't know. We don't really have sweet things back where I was."

_Where you were?_ Renjun assumed he meant the demonic realm, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Every time Sicheng mentioned where he'd come from, his eyes took on a dark, faraway cast. Renjun wouldn’t go so far as saying he felt sympathetic about it, but there was something sad about the careful way Sicheng handled a scoop of ice cream. Even if it was leaving Renjun’s wallet in shambles.

So Renjun had sat in silence, swinging his legs over the pavement, while Sicheng finished his ice cream.

Today Sicheng wanted the pistachio flavor. The girl at the counter had frizzy hair and an eyebrow piercing, and always seemed to be there in the late afternoon.

"Interesting cat you got," she said, as she passed him the scoop over the glass. "Does he just follow you around like that?"

He startled a little. She'd never talked to him before, outside of taking his order. Usually her gaze slid right over him as if he was about as interesting as the wall behind him, but today she was actually looking at him. He’d never noticed how large her eyes were.

He blinked. He remembered that she'd asked him a question. "Uh, yeah, he does," he said.

"Weird. Never seen a cat do that." She didn't sound that interested. Maybe she was just trying to keep some conversation going, since there wasn't anyone else in the shop.

Sicheng's tail swished on the ground, while she rang him up on the cash register.

"Can I pet him?"

"Sorry, he doesn't really like strangers," Renjun rushed out before he could even think why he’d say that, with no real reason other than that he didn’t want to let her touch Sicheng.

"Aw, sad," she said, and took his money.

* * *

It was the little things that reminded Renjun of school. Waking up sure that he was about to be late to class, only to flounder in sheets that were a striped beige instead of blue. Fingers scrabbling for his phone because why hadn’t his alarm gone off? And remembering that he didn't have anywhere to go, that he didn't even have to be awake.

He’d turn to say, "Did you see that, Donghyuck?" and see Sicheng looking back at him. Or sometimes, just the empty space where Donghyuck used to be. Sometimes, he’d stand there stupidly, trying to remember why it was empty.

He’d stop in the middle of the sidewalk, watching a group of boys nudging each other and running across the street.

* * *

Donghyuck kept Renjun up to date on his life, and changes around the academy.

_A couple first years went home this week, but your favorite Joowon's back. His mom publicly chewed him out for scurrying home, wish you could've seen. Hilarious._

_Tell your friend YangYang to stop leaving his stupid beetles around here! I swear he’s doing it on purpose._

_You keeping up your magic out there? You better be._

Renjun had all their contacts now. There was a group chat with all of them that YangYang had somehow wrangled his way into. He’d taken it over with hourly photos of his ermine, with taglines like, _Just caught a mouse, so cute!_ Renjun couldn't complain, though he did think it took a lot of love (or delusion, but wasn’t that the same thing?) to call something cute when it had a dead mouse dangling from its mouth. Donghyuck competed with photos of his familiar, but he was fighting a losing battle. Renjun doubted anyone else thought the osprey was cute. Once in a while, Renjun sent a photo of Sicheng.

"I am immortal and powerful beyond your understanding. I am not cute," Sicheng would fume.

"I know," Renjun would say. "Now can you turn the other way?"

Jisung sent captioned images that were apparently supposed to be funny, but Renjun really didn't get. Chenle brought in gossip, and Jaemin interspersed school updates with unnecessarily suggestive comments at anyone who’d let him get away with it. Renjun did not indulge him. And Jeno...Jeno made puns. He seemed to think they were funny.

* * *

It was the little things that reminded Renjun of Jeno. An itch over his collarbone. The way his heart pounded after a run around the neighborhood, though sneakers on pavement felt nothing like magic over the forest floor. Sometimes, when someone with dark midnight hair passed by in the crowd, Renjun would look back to get a glimpse of their face.

When Renjun thumbed over his messages, he saw Jeno's icon smiling back at him. Seeing Jeno smile so easily in his icon seemed wrong somehow, an awkward placement between familiar and unfamiliar, closer to surreal. Jeno had started to smile more around Renjun only recently.

Renjun couldn't even say the smile was the same as the one he saw. The smile he saw was less sure of itself, tentative. It came with a side of guilt. _I'm sorry my brother tried to give you to a demon,_ it seemed to say. _I'm sorry I've already forgiven him_.

Renjun stopped in front of a vending machine with rows of drinks. He couldn’t say what possessed him to put in the coins and press the button, but before he knew it his money was gone and there was the click, tumble, and final clang of the drink rolling to the bottom of the machine. Renjun reached down and pulled out a can of orange soda. It felt heavy in his hand.

Renjun thumbed over Jeno's icon again. He tapped on it, and the chat screen opened up.

_How's it going?_ he typed into the bubble at the bottom of the screen. That would be normal, right? The kind of message you'd send between friends.

Renjun's finger hovered over the send button.

He deleted the message, locked the screen, and sat down on the curb.

He cracked open the top of the soda can, listening to the hiss of escaping carbon dioxide. A waste of 1.50. He put it to his lips anyway, and let it bubble down his throat. The aftertaste was metallic, like blood.

* * *

From Donghyuck Lee, 8:39 pm:

_Mixed class got nasty today. It got around that Park had the witches he kidnapped kill the vampires. You know how Kun is Mina's brother and Taeil is Eunsoo's? Eunsoo got it in her head that it was Kun's fault, like he wanted to do it or something. Crazy, right? But I guess she's grieving, so honestly hard to blame her. She shouldn't even be at school right now. I think she came just to deck Mina. Fucked up her nose pretty bad before the professors could stop her._

* * *

Renjun hadn’t used magic since the day he'd touched the man in the street. He had been holding his magic tight against his chest, tight enough that it was hard to breathe. He was getting good at it, if he did say so himself. Even if getting good meant feeling a little under the weather constantly, a little short of breath, the world muffled and duller around the edges than it should be.

Sicheng had taken him back to the old swing set. It was tucked out of the way, at the back of some old buildings that would be demolished for a shiny apartment complex any year now. Not many people passed by on a good day, and with the gray clouds overhead, they saw no one.

"First off, you'll want to stop that," Sicheng said.

"I'm not doing anything," Renjun said.

"You're trying to do nothing. Stop trying to do nothing."

"But—"

"I won't let anything happen." Sicheng sounded so sure of himself that Renjun almost believed him. But Sicheng was a demon. He didn't have magic. How would he know how it worked? "Renjun, you have to feel your magic if you want to control it. There's no one here. It's okay."

That much was true. Renjun took a deep breath, and stopped trying to push his magic down and away. Letting it back in was like waking up when he didn't know he'd been sleeping, dizzying in a beautiful kind of way. His magic was everywhere at once, sparking at his fingertips, beating with the sound of his heart, pressing up against his ribcage with the up down motion of his breath.

He'd missed it. And it was...It was hungry.

"It's worse than before," Renjun said, shivering. "It isn't supposed to be like this, is it?"

"It's worse because you've been holding it in."

"What else am I supposed to do? I don't want to hurt anyone."

Sicheng cocked his head. "Hmm, you don't? You're more conscientious than I thought."

Sicheng looked amused, and Renjun didn't think it was very funny. "Not all of us are demons here," he snapped.

"Touche. But I am a little hurt you think I have no conscience."

Sicheng held out his black clawed hand, palm up, to Renjun. Renjun tentatively laid his hand over Sicheng's. "I want you to feel for my energy," Sicheng said.

"Your energy? I never noticed..."

"That's because you haven't tried, and because a demon's energy isn't so obvious."

Renjun reached out with his magic, and let it run through Sicheng's palm. He felt nothing at first, just darkness. Then, slowly, he made out another darker darkness within the darkness, circular and pulsating lightly. Like Sicheng said, it wasn't the bright flare of vampire or witch energy, or the softer glow of human energy. He wouldn't have noticed it if he weren't looking for it. It reminded him of a darkness he'd felt before, in a cage of thorns.

"You've found it." It wasn't a question. "Now take a little energy from me, as little as you can."

Renjun hesitated.

"You won't hurt me."

Still, Renjun hesitated. His magic swirled hungrily around the dark center. "I don't want to take too much."

Sicheng looked amused again. "You, now? You presume a lot if you think that you can take anything from a demon that they haven't chosen to give."

Renjun realized Sicheng was right. His magic curled around the darkness in Sicheng, but it hadn't absorbed any of it. Even when Renjun tried to reach for Sicheng's energy, he seemed to hit some sort of wall. He frowned.

"I...can't," Renjun said, though he had a feeling if he gathered up all his magic, he might be able to sledgehammer through.

Sicheng nodded, pleased. "Now, try again."

Underneath his magic, Renjun felt that wall open up, a minuscule tear in the fabric. Renjun reached in and tried to take a small amount of the energy. He yelped when it burned.

The next moment, he felt the energy being yanked back away from him. "Too much," Sicheng said. "Try again."

"That hurts," Renjun protested.

"It wouldn't if you took less."

He reached again, slower this time, not looking forward to it. He hadn’t signed up to be in pain. He envisioned taking a drop, but again, it burned. This time he gritted his teeth through it. Again Sicheng yanked his energy back from Renjun, easy as breathing.

"Still too much." Renjun really did not appreciate the smug half-smile on Sicheng's face. It kept him going, even as the edges of his magic started to feel like he'd been holding them over hot coals.

Some time later, he was able to take little enough to avoid getting burned, but Sicheng just shook his head and said, "Still too much."

It wasn’t until long after then that he was finally able to meet Sicheng's satisfaction. He felt numb and tired, and the energy he took felt smaller than a grain of sand. This time, Sicheng did not take his energy back.

"You can keep that one, for your efforts," Sicheng said, as though he were handing out a great gift. Renjun, sweat dotting his forehead and sure part of him was still burning away somewhere, was 100% uninterested and 200% ungrateful. Yet, when the grain of sand speck of Sicheng's energy melded into the dark lines running across Renjun's magic, a little of his fatigue lifted.

Renjun's vision didn't shift. He held a hand in front of his eyes. No HD sharpness, or over bright saturation.

"I doubt demon energy would change your eyes. It's not made of the same stuff," Sicheng said. "Not that it matters. No energy should change your eyes if you take this little."

“How do you know all this?”

“Like I said, you’re not the first part human I’ve met.”

By the time they trudged home, he was so tired that even though his magic still pulsed with hunger, all he wanted to do was curl up in bed. Maybe wearing him out was the point of the exercise.

* * *

From Donghyuck Lee, 10:42 pm:

_Brought my familiar out to botany club today. I think Yuta's jealous. Yeah, he's def jealous._

From Donghyuck Lee, 11:02 am:

_Botany club's off. All outdoor clubs are off until "it's safe", whatever that means._

* * *

Through the rest of the week Sicheng made Renjun practice taking bits of energy from him without physical contact. When he could do that, Sicheng made him do it from further and further distances.

A week after that, Sicheng took Renjun out into the city. Renjun tried not to guess what people would think if they realized he was following his cat. They ducked into an alleyway just outside the main stream of foot traffic.

When they were half-hidden in the shadows, Sicheng transformed back into his original form.

"What are you doing?" Renjun hissed. "If anyone sees you—"

"They won't," Sicheng said with a dismissive wave. "It's dark enough that they won't see a thing." He put one clawed hand on Renjun's shoulder and turned him toward the stream of people passing in front of the opening of the alleyway. Renjun didn't agree. He was sure any moment now one of these people would glance into the alleyway and see Sicheng standing behind him.

Sicheng shook his shoulder. "Concentrate. I want you to take that same amount of energy you take from me from each of the people that passes by here."

"From these people? Sicheng, I said I didn't want to hurt—"

"If you don't take more than that amount, you won't hurt them. Even what you take will regenerate itself in less than a day," Sicheng whispered to the back of his right ear.

"But it—"

"You said your magic feels hungry? Then the only solution is to feed it. I don't know if you realized it, but you have to take energy, Renjun, or that hunger will only get worse. But if you do it this way, with precision, with control, you get energy and you hurt no one."

Renjun swallowed. Sicheng was right—the hunger had been getting worse. But… “You’ll stop anything bad from happening?”

“Of course.”

Slowly, Renjun sent his magic out. But when it neared the people passing by in front of the alley, he hesitated. “Trust me,” Sicheng said. He squeezed Renjun’s shoulder. Renjun wasn’t sure if he heard or imagined the rest. “Trust yourself.”

Okay. Okay, he could do this.

His magic latched easily onto the closest person passing in front of the alleyway. Too easily, like a fish hook sinking into the roof of a soft mouth. The pull of the hunger hit him hard. It was much stronger than with Sicheng’s energy.

This energy wasn’t formless and dark. It was light, pale glow spilling softly outward, beautiful and delicious in its softness. 

Renjun let out a low hiss. “You didn’t say it would be like this.”

"May I remind you that I’m not you? I don’t know what it’s like.” Sicheng sounded faintly amused. Renjun wanted to snap that it wasn’t funny, but he had a hard time forming a coherent sentence when the hunger was clamoring for his attention.

“The smallest amount," Sicheng said. Renjun bit his lip. It wasn’t that he’d been thinking about taking more than that, but what was the difference between a tiny bit and a tiny bit more? It might not even hurt. It probably wouldn't hurt. It wouldn’t hurt. “No more,” Sicheng said sharply.

Right. Renjun forced himself to focus. He tried to extract the smallest, smallest amount he'd ever taken, and he probably succeeded because Sicheng made a sound of approval.

When Renjun absorbed the speck of energy, he felt a small burst of strength and a greater burst of satiation he didn't get from Sicheng's energy. He watched, amazed, as the girl he'd taken the energy from continued past the alleyway without a change in her step. He probably would have continued to watch her go, if Sicheng didn’t urge him on to the other people passing by.

He felt the same amazement each time, when each person continued by like nothing had happened. Maybe he really could do this. Less than three people later, the hunger dissipated, settling down in a lazy contentment.

"See? It's easy as that," Sicheng said.

Renjun's vision had sharpened, but not much. "My eyes?" he asked.

"Only flecks," Sicheng promised.

Then Sicheng touched the side of Renjun’s face, finger on bare skin, and the energy Renjun had absorbed was torn away from him. Renjun lurched with the sense of loss. The hunger returned full force and he whirled on Sicheng, a snarl tearing its way out of his throat.

Sicheng turned him back toward the front with a calm hand. "Again. But this time from multiple people at the same time."

Time passed in a blur. Sicheng had him do it again until he could absorb energy from enough people to satisfy his magic at one time, then again until he could do both more and less than that. More people was actually easier, because stopping at that small amount for each individual came easier when there were many to choose from. Controlling the number of people was harder.

“Five people, Renjun. I said five.”

Renjun ran a frustrated hand through his hair. He was tired, and five, four, ten? It was hard to distinguish when they were all packed together like that, moving in the same direction. All he knew was that more than six people shot his vision into HD sharp color. “I know. I’m trying.”

“Try harder,” Sicheng said, completely unsympathetic.

“You demon,” he grumbled.

“I’m aware of that.”

The worst part was that brief feeling of satisfaction that he had no time to enjoy before Sicheng snatched it away, again and again. Each time, Renjun felt like punching a wall. Or Sicheng. Or both. He wondered which one would hurt his hands more.

Finally, when the rays of sunlight turned pale gold against the tops of the walls of alleyway, Sicheng said, “Okay, last try. 10 people, exactly 10, and you get to go home.”

Renjun almost sagged in relief. How much time had passed? Hours? He’d come to the conclusion that demons didn’t understand the concept of fatigue.

Also, 10 people? Easy. The more people the better, when it came to his magic.

Renjun reached out with his magic. At first it clung onto more than 10 people, but with the prize of going home dangling in front of him, he pushed the further ones aside and forced himself to focus exactly 10. Quickly, knowing that his focus wouldn’t last, he channeled in a bit of their energy.

Energy from 9 of the people came with ease, but his magic seemed to slide over the last person. There was something strange there, a smudge over the usual glow.

Before he could feel it out more, the person stopped in front of the alleyway. A little girl with a balloon in one hand, and an adult, probably her father, in the other. She turned until she was squinting into the alleyway. The red balloon bobbed above her.

"Come along, Yuna," the adult said. The girl obediently let the adult pull her away.

"We’ve got to go. I think she saw us. I think she saw you," Renjun said.

"I doubt she saw me," Sicheng said. "Even if she did, who would she tell?"

"I don’t know, but I think there was something off about her. Her energy was...weird."

Sicheng tilted his head quizzically, and Renjun immediately felt stupid for saying it. "I didn’t feel anything off, but you could be tired," he said. "I think this is enough for today."

“But you said 10 people.”

“Close enough.”

Sicheng turned back into a cat and started to pad away down the alleyway before Renjun could protest that he was fine, he could keep going. Renjun followed him, feeling vaguely disappointed in himself.

* * *

From YangYang Liu, 3:03 pm:

_Creation magic class might be back soon!!! No deets yet so idk for sure but Koon showed them everything we got and the vampires might b k with it if they can check everything we make? So like you gotta come back soon._

* * *

The screen buzzed to life, to a closeup of Donghyuck's face.

"There you are, finally," Donghyuck said. He shifted his phone up from his face, revealing everyone else sitting around him in their living room. They waved and shouted.

Renjun rolled over onto his stomach and propped his phone up on his pillow.

They told him what they'd been learning in mixed class, about the start of new relationships and the end of old ones among their classmates, not all names that Renjun even recognized, and about how no one had seen Park since the professors interrogated him. Questions about him were shut down.

"I haven't seen the gardener since last week. I think they might be firing the human workers around campus because they can't tell if any of them are possessed," Donghyuck whispered conspiratorially.

Even on the small screen of his phone, Renjun could see Chenle roll his eyes. "You're only saying that because you think the gardener is possessed."

"You saw him staring at me that one time."

"Yeah, because you were in his way?"

Donghyuck passed the phone around. Jaemin and Jeno shared the screen. "Can't wait for you to come back," Jaemin said.

"Yeah, it's not the same without you around," Jeno said. More softly, he added, "We miss you." He passed on the phone before Renjun could say a word in response.

Chenle complained about the witch he'd been matched up with in Renjun's stead. "He thinks he's the gods' gift to the world, _and_ I'm sure he doesn't shower more than once a week. " Jisung patted his shoulder in consolation.

Donghyuck snatched the phone back before Chenle could go off into a lengthy rant. "Okay, got to go. We're going out to get dinner. By which I mean we're all going to walk to the restaurant, YangYang and I are going to get takeout, and we're going to come back."

A final wave, and they ended the call. Renjun rolled onto his back and splayed his legs and arms out over his bedsheets.

Renjun was grateful they kept him in the loop. He really was. But it hurt too, to see all of them together without him.

* * *

From YangYang Liu, 4:05 am:

_Just when I thought everything was gonna get better, my parents are coming to drag me home too. They're suuper paranoid about this whole thing, and I keep telling them it's not gonna be any better at home, but do they listeN?_

To YangYang Liu, 10:22 am:

_I feel for you, for real, but welcome to the club? Also, why are you awake at 4 am?_

From YangYang Liu, 10:22 am:

_You don’t understand, like the demon isn’t gonna kill me cos I’m gonna die from boredom?? This sucks._

* * *

_How's it goin|_ Renjun started typing, then deleted it.

_Hey. What's up?_ he typed instead.

He deleted that too.

* * *

From Donghyuck Lee, 11:16 am:

_We're getting a week off school because all the professors are getting called for some important meeting, so everyone's going home for a week. Jisung and Chenle are going to get taken straight home, but Jaemin, Jeno, and I were thinking of dropping by to visit you on the way back. That okay with you?_

* * *

Donghyuck, Jaemin, and Jeno arrived in the early afternoon, while Renjun's mom was still out at the cafe. It was lucky for him, because Renjun didn't know how she would take not one, but two non-Chenle vampires stepping into their home.

Jeno and Jaemin looked dead tired.

"They wanted to come later, but I told them you had a curfew," Donghyuck said.

"It's 2 in the afternoon," Jaemin moaned. "I need my beauty sleep."

"You can sleep on the ride," Jeno said, though he wasn't in much better shape. Jaemin had a chauffeur, a concept that boggled Renjun's mind, who had driven them to Renjun's house and seemed perfectly content to wait in the car while they hung out. It turned out that Donghyuck didn't live too far from Jeno's home, so Jaemin's driver could drop him off before swinging by Jeno's to stay for a day as he usually did during breaks.

Renjun gave them a cursory tour of his home, though there wasn't much to show.

"This place is small," Jaemin said, as if he were awed by the fact.

Jeno elbowed him. "Don't call someone's home small."

"We don't all live in mansions, Na," Donghyuck said.

"No, I like it! It's cozy."

Renjun shook his head, amused. He didn't think his place was small, with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living _and_ dining room, and a backyard. Jaemin should see the place he'd lived in before.

Donghyuck was more interested in the garden in the back than the interior. Too interested, really. Renjun had to pull him away before he decided to start snipping off parts of some of the plants, and led to Renjun’s early demise at the hands of his own mother.

Renjun led them out of his house with the excuse of showing them around the neighborhood. "Stay and guard the house," he told Sicheng, with a sweet smile, knowing Sicheng couldn't protest while he was a cat. He felt a little bad leaving Sicheng behind, but he didn't feel like having Sicheng's eyes on him during the one time he had with friends. He also felt a little bad dragging Jeno and Jaemin out of his house in their current condition, but he had to make sure they weren't around when his mom got home.

It was worth it when they got out into the streets. Renjun had a good laugh at how disoriented they looked when they got caught in the stream of people moving past them. They probably hadn't been around so many humans at once, since Donghyuck's home was part of a witch community, and Jaemin and Jeno only came out at night.

They went in and out of the little shops down the street, from a board game shop to a second-hand book store to a plant nursery. Renjun took them to what his mother claimed was the best place for coffee besides their cafe, to let Jaemin try it out. He pointed out a crepe shop with a line that wound around the block. He had no intention of joining the line, but Donghyuck and Jaemin insisted they try it once they found out the crepes came toppings and ice cream sculpted into the shape of animals.

"You can't even eat it, Jaemin," Renjun said.

"Your point?" Jaemin asked.

Renjun shook his head, and waved them over to the line. "Okay, but you're on your own. I'm not going to brave that line for you. I'll wait back at the book shop."

He hadn't walked more than a few steps down the street when he heard footsteps and Jeno fell in line beside him. "Thought I'd come with you since I don't want to wait in line either," he said.

Renjun nodded. "Smart choice."

They walked in companionable silence back to the book shop, but when they got there neither of them went in. They stood side by side, in front of the glass. The silence stretched out, not uncomfortable, but hard to break. Renjun opened his mouth, though he hadn't thought of anything to say—

Then someone approached him from the other side. He felt their energy first, kind of smudged up, his magic sliding over it and off. It was the girl from the ice cream shop.

"I thought I recognized you," she said. "Different flavor every day boy."

"Yup, that's me," Renjun said weakly.

Without the ice cream shop uniform, she looked twice as intimidating and twice as disinterested, leaning against the wall in her denim shorts and knee-high socks, blowing a bubble out of pale blue gum.

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, and said, "There's something I want to show you. Come with me?"

She sounded like she could care less if he came or not. Renjun just stared at her. "I'm good, thanks," he said.

"No really, you should come." Her tone didn't change, but she reached out a hand and clasped his arm. He flinched at the sudden contact, but she didn't let go.

Despite how bored she sounded, her hand gripped him like an iron vise, her nails digging into his flesh. He couldn't get his arm out of her grip. He should have known skipping the gym would bite him back someday.

"He said he's not interested." Suddenly Jeno was between them, prying her hand off his arm. Her nails raked across Renjun's skin as Jeno pried off her hand, leaving white trails.

The girl's eyes roved over Jeno's face, then flitted back to Renjun. She rubbed at her wrist when Jeno let her go. "Yeesh, you've got some grip." As if she didn't notice the scratch marks she'd left on Renjun's arm. "This your friend? He can come too."

"What don't you get about 'not interested'?" Jeno said.

The girl raised both hands in surrender, and backed away. "Okay, okay, no need to get aggressive about it. You're really missing out though. Maybe next time?"

With a wave, she left. They both watched her disappear into the crowd.

"Who was that?" Jeno asked. "You know her?"

"Not really. She’s the girl who scoops ice cream at the ice cream place I go to. She's never...done that before. She's never even talked to me really." He felt tense, on edge, his heartbeat a little too loud in his ears.

Jeno must have heard it, because he asked, "Are you, uh, scared?"

"Do you have to ask that?" Renjun said. His eyes darted around, sure somehow that the girl was still there, that she'd been trying to psyche him out and was laughing because she'd succeeded. "I don't want anyone to overhear. And for the record, no, I’m not." A lie, but it made him feel better. The scratch marks had gone an angry pink.

Jeno pulled him around to the side of the building and stood in front of him, blocking him from the view of the passerby. "No one to overhear now. You sure everything's okay? That was weird."

Renjun forced himself to laugh. "Tell me about it. Lots of weird people in the city though. Guess she's one of them?" In a smaller voice, "Thank you." His words were almost lost in the chatter of people passing behind them.

With the girl gone, Renjun’s momentary panic felt like a massive overreaction. He shifted from one foot to the other. "So how's everything been, at the academy?" Renjun asked.

"It's okay. More people have gone home. They want to start going into advanced techniques in mixed class. Like formations with multiple groups of partners."

Renjun groaned. "I was already having a hard enough time with the basics. How am I supposed to catch up when I get back?"

"You're coming back?"

The question caught him off guard. Renjun couldn't answer. He didn't know.

Then Jeno said, "You should. Everyone says it's not the same without you around. And I—well, I..." Jeno hesitated, scratching the back of his head.

"Just spit it out."

"I want you to come back too. I kind of missed you," Jeno said. He ducked his head. It didn't have to mean anything.

But maybe it did. And maybe, just maybe, Renjun wanted it to.

"Yeah, me too," Renjun said.

* * *

They left after Jaemin made himself sick by taking a bite of the crepe.

“You are seriously an idiot. Why would you even try human food?” Donghyuck said, laughing his head off. Then promptly made himself sick by scarfing down the rest too fast.

Later that night, Renjun opened up that still empty chat.

_Hey, what's up?_ he typed. He stared at it for a little. Then he hit send.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did this chapter happen because i downed half a pint of ice cream? maybe
> 
> also!! a lovely commenter from a couple weeks back made me some [fanart](https://bit.ly/3frG4B2) (their [twitter](https://twitter.com/Dreamie718)) and i wanted to share 
> 
> umm what can i say? just...i am so awed that ppl not only be keeping up with this monster baby but be making art... *ugly cries


	30. discordance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning that there's some violence in this chapter in the latter half

Chenle picked up a flat stone and threw it across the pond. It skipped, once, twice, three times, before sinking into the water.

“You’ve gotten bad at this,” Jisung said from the side.

Chenle glared at him, though it was true. “I’d like to see you do better.”

Jisung picked up a stone and threw it. It skipped twice before sinking. Chenle laughed while Jisung locked incredulously at the spot where the stone had sunk into the water, ripples still expanding outward from it. Chenle wasn’t sure when it’d become easy to laugh like this, and though sometimes in the back of his head he thought he should mind it, he really didn’t.

“Too bad!” Chenle crowed.

“Wait, that was a fluke. Let me try again.”

“Nope.” He felt nostalgic here, skipping stones at the estate pond, though back then they’d been dodging Jisung’s tutors. “You never win anyway.”

Jisung blew air up into his bangs and then brushed through them with his fingers, the way he did when he was annoyed or embarrassed. “I can’t believe you remember that,” he muttered.

“I remember a lot of things.”

Jisung picked up another stone and tossed it at the pond. This one sunk straight in. He huffed, and sat back in the dirt. His parents probably complain that he got his clothes dirty, he’d probably ignore them, and they’d probably let him off.

“I remember a lot too,” Jisung said.

“Do you?” It came out sharper than intended, but Chenle wasn’t sorry about it.

Okay, he felt a little sorry when Jisung got that pinched, slightly hurt expression. “You think I don’t?” Jisung said, rather defensively. This was why some of the vampires didn’t treat Jisung with the same deference as other heirs of his status. They wouldn’t disrespect him, but they’d verge closer to it. Jisung couldn’t project Jeno’s mask of cold blankness, or Jaemin’s smiling pleasantness. Though with Jaemin, Chenle couldn’t tell if it was a mask or real—Jaemin was tricky like that. It was one of the reasons Chenle had never been close to him.

Jisung was readable. A mistake on his parents’ part, those around them whispered, a weakness. But Chenle hadn’t seen it that way. Being close to Jisung had been easy because Jisung didn’t have his barriers up. Was still easy.

Chenle shrugged. “I don’t know what you remember. It’s not like it really matters.”

Jisung sat upright. “It does matter. I remember you were my best friend, and now…” He waved his big hands around in that stupid way he did when he was flustered.

“I’m not,” Chenle said.

“You don’t want to be!”

Chenle gave up on his search for the perfect flat stone to cross his arms. “Seriously?”

“You never even told me why.”

The gentle nostalgia Chenle had been floating on vanished. “There’s no why. You’re the one who stopped hanging out with me. You’re the one who found better things to do and better friends, and was ‘too busy’ all the time. You expect to be best friends after that?” Chenle sneered. He knew it was an ugly look, and he didn’t care. “You expect to even be friends?”

Jisung looked taken aback. “I guess...I did.”

That almost set Chenle off. He was this close to stomping off in the other direction, not because there was really anywhere to go, but because he’d take the drama of it if he couldn’t have anything else. He hesitated when he felt Jisung’s uncertainty over the link. Despite it all, it still pulled at his heartstrings. That made him angrier. He was the weak one here. Even now, he couldn’t cut it off. He couldn’t just leave.

“I thought we were different. Like no matter what we’d mean something to each other. I didn’t think time and distance would change that.”

Chenle was speechless. Now this was getting ridiculous.

“No, I get it. Don’t look at me like that. I get that I was wrong! But I really thought that, and we always had the link, so I thought it wouldn’t matter if we weren't talking as much. And you were the one who started closing off the link more…”

“Because you stopped talking to me!” And because he’d been tired of the little bursts of elation Jisung felt when hanging with his other friends. And because he hadn’t wanted Jisung to know he didn’t have that. He had kids pointing and laughing when he got pantsed in the courtyard by the school joker.

“I asked Jaemin about it, and he said I should give you space. That we were growing up, and if you were closing it off with puberty and everything,” Jisung stuttered a bit at this, and a flash of what—embarrassment?—flooded the link, “you probably didn’t want me in your head all the time. And…” Jisung looked down at his hands. Chenle didn’t need the link to tell him he was ashamed. “I did get busy. I really believed nothing would change, not with us.”

It was so naive and so like Jisung to hold onto a belief like that. A pick up where we left off, skip into the sunset kind of vision.

“Does it have to change?” Jisung asked. So he was still holding onto it.

“It already has,” Chenle said. Knowing that Jisung missed those times too soothed some of that old hurt, but old memories and a handful of recent hangouts weren’t going to cover the spaces between them, not even if Jisung wanted them to. Not even if Chenle wanted them to, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t. On some level Jisung understood, because he didn’t protest. Chenle’s voice was gentle. “It’s never going to be like that again.”

Jisung grunted, dissatisfied.

And it wasn’t the quiet sadness coming through the link that drove Chenle to speak again. It was that Chenle wanted. He’d always wanted. Greed beyond his place, his parents would say.

“It doesn’t mean we can’t get a good thing going again,” Chenle said. “It won’t be the same, but that doesn’t have to be bad.”

Jisung’s head tilted up, hopeful for a second, before he scowled. “Yeah, until you leave for real.”

“You can always visit me.”

“I always thought once we’d grown up we’d be together. Changing the world, like you said we would.”

Jisung remembered that? That was almost embarrassing.

“We can still change the world, just separately.”

“Can’t I go with you?”

Chenle went speechless for the second time. Jisung wanted to go with him? Scratch his earlier thoughts. This was real ridiculousness. Jisung knew it was ridiculous, or he _should_ , and he still dared to sound serious about it.

“You can’t. You know you can’t. You’re the family heir.”

Jisung picked up a rock and tossed it at the lake. It landed with a splash. “I know,” he said.

* * *

Jeno didn’t message back until days later. That was about the same as his group chat turnaround time, so Renjun tried not to take it personally.

**From Jeno Lee, 11:12 pm:**

_Renjun? Did something happen?_

**To Jeno Lee, 11:13 pm:**

_Uh, no? Just bored haha. What are you and Jaemin doing?_

Was that response too fast? Did he sound overeager? Ugh, whatever. He was bored. He had Sicheng around, but Sicheng was more interested in training than fun. Chenle had gone full-on MIA, and Donghyuck had family activities all the time, apparently. “Perks of having a million cousins lying around,” Donghyuck said. “Neverending drama and babysitting.” Renjun would say YangYang was the only friend he could trust, but YangYang’s access to technology had been taken away by his parents when they caught him auctioning off an old vase online.

(“Why would you do that?”

“They’re hoarders! I was doing them a _favor_.”

“You don’t even know what kind of magic is in the vase. What if you set off a curse by selling it or something?”

“That kind of paranoia is how you become a hoarder, Renjun. And that’s why I added disclaimers. Duh.”)

Jeno, at least, had the privilege of having a friend with him. Jaemin was staying at Jeno’s for a majority of their break because his parents had been called away on business. There’d been a lot of business lately.

**From Jeno Lee, 11:13 pm:**

_We’re training. Then my uncle’s going to take us into the city._

Training on break? They were worse than Sicheng. Renjun read the rest of the message. He could imagine what they’d be doing in the city. He didn’t ask. What would he say anyway? Happy hunting?

_Jaemin says hi. He’s offended you didn’t message him first._

**To Jeno Lee, 11:16 pm:**

_I would message him, if he wasn’t the worst._

Jaemin on chat was five times worse than Jaemin in person. Real-life Jaemin at least pretended to have some modicum of self-respect. Jaemin on chat had started attaching endearments to everyone’s names in the group chat. If he tried to call Renjun Jun baby one more time, Renjun wasn’t just going to kick him off the chat like last time. Renjun was going to inflict real suffering. Now if he could just figure out how to do that over the phone…

**From Jeno Lee, 11:17 pm:**

_Now I have to deal with him sulking. Thanks a lot._

**To Jeno Lee, 11:18 pm:**

_Good._

**From Jaemin Na, 11:20 pm:**

_It’s okay, Jun baby, I know you still love me._

**To Jaemin Na, 11:21 pm:**

_I’m going to kill you._

**From Jaemin Na, 11:21 pm:**

_Can’t wait!_

* * *

Absorbing energy had become easier, almost to the point of second nature. When Renjun walked through a crowd, it was easy to take a little here, a little there. It was harder to not take any.

Especially when it allowed him to use magic. Sicheng hadn’t lied about that, either.

At first he’d tried not to use his magic too often. It had seemed gratuitous when he didn’t need it, but now that he had the very good reason of hey, he was about to fall so far behind in class he’d never catch up again, he’d started to push past his reservations. And maybe he just wanted to use magic. 

So what if the more he used his magic, the more energy he needed to take from those around him? They were so many people, so many choices, passing around him nameless and never to be seen again. He could even afford to be picky, to take bits of the most vibrant, _most delicious_ (okay, weird, where’d that thought come from?) energy. It wasn’t like he was hurting anyone. His control wasn’t great, but it was good enough, and as long as Sicheng was by his side, Renjun didn’t have to worry. If he slipped up and took a little too much energy, Sicheng fixed it before anyone noticed.

“Can I do that?” Renjun had asked him. “Can I return energy I’ve taken?”

Sicheng had considered him for a long while. “I’m afraid only demons can do that,” he’d said, finally. Seeing Renjun’s disappointment, he’d added, “But we can still try. I just wouldn’t have any expectations. Also, not until you’re better at this. It’s a much more complicated process, and more can go wrong.”

The fire Renjun sparked at the ends of his fingertips still glowed black. If he raised any barriers, though they weren’t visible to the naked eye, he could feel out that they were made of lattices of thorns. From time to time, he tried to change that. Maybe he would earn a participation award for trying, because it was about as useful as hitting his head against a wall otherwise.

It didn’t seem so important anymore. He grew to accept that he might not be able to change how his magic behaved. He could do magic, and for now that was enough.

* * *

Some days Sicheng got tired and couldn’t go with Renjun when he went outside. Those days he’d sleep for long hours in cat form.

When that happened, Renjun was more cautious. He didn’t use magic at all. But sometimes when he walked by someone, their energy would call to him, more need than want, and before he thought about it he’d already have sent out a tendril, curled around it, and pulled in a bit for himself. 

He occasionally felt the presence of smudged-up energy again, always far in the periphery. Even if he squinted at the person it came from, they never noticed him. He didn’t see the ice cream girl again.

The time Sicheng needed to stay in and rest started to increase over the days.

“What’s happening to you?” Renjun asked. “Do you need something you aren’t getting? Like food?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sicheng said with a yawn, before stretching out on Renjun’s bed. “There’s nothing wrong.”

Sometimes Sicheng would mumble under his breath in his sleep. “Not yet...my favorite flavor is chocolate, no that’s not why...don’t be impatient, can you listen to me for once in your life…”

Renjun would’ve found it cute if it weren’t for the way Sicheng’s breath would sometimes quicken, and how he would twitch uneasily against the bed sheets.

Renjun ran a hand through the fur on the underside of Sicheng’s stomach, his fingers feeling over the bumps of Sicheng’s ribs. He had gotten thinner.

* * *

Renjun knocked on his mother’s door. When there was no answer, he cautiously turned the knob and pushed open the door.

“Mom?” he called, just in case, but one look told him she wasn’t in. He thought he’d heard her come up earlier, but maybe she’d gone back to the living room. He was about to head down when he saw the lamp light still on above her desk. 

He walked in with a sigh. It was one of her bad habits, leaving the lights on when her mind was elsewhere. Without him around, he was sure the electricity bill had skyrocketed.

As he was about to flick off the light, his eyes caught on the papers strewn across her desk, covered with notes.

_How to banish demons...the old blood magic? Need to cross reference. Source unspecified._

What? He squinted. His mother’s handwriting wasn’t easy to read at the best of times, and more so in the dim lamplight. Several parts were crossed out, and others underlined. Whole pages on human possession, references to demon powers and the Seal, some sketches with names.

“That does not look like me,” Sicheng complained, jumping up onto the desk.

Renjun peered at a sketch of a hulking creature with glowing eyes. “Win...win?”

“An old nickname,” Sicheng said with displeasure. “And half of this is wrong to begin with. See here?”

“‘In many cases, can manipulate vampires and witches as easily as humans, though this is different from possession and the circumstances are unclear’,” Renjun read.

“As if it’s that easy. We can’t manipulate vampires or witches without a pact with a witch, so isn’t it really the witch doing the manipulating? Magic is key. And possessing humans isn’t easy either. It’s a lot of work. I can’t just go around possessing humans all over the place, and why would I want to?”

“That’s good to know,” Renjun said dryly. “I’ll let them know to fix up their demonology books.”

Sicheng didn’t seem to appreciate Renju’s lack of sympathy. He lifted his tail high, and hopped off the table. Renjun turned back to the papers.

_There must be a sacrifice. Given willingly. But I am not willing._

“Renjun, what are you doing here?”

Renjun jumped. His mother stood in the doorway.

“You...you left the light on.” He switched off the lamp, plunging the room and them into the soft darkness of the evening. He wished he’d left it on. He couldn’t see his mother’s expression with her face half-obscured in shadow. “I was looking for you,” he said, though that didn’t seem as important now. “But why are you looking into demons? Is something going on?”

“Everyone’s looking into demons, Renjun,” she said, like he was the fool for asking. “We must all contribute what we can. I don’t appreciate you looking through my desk without permission.”

“I didn’t mean to...I was really just looking for you.”

He heard her exhale, not quite a sigh. “I suppose you wouldn’t.” She didn’t look like herself, her hair falling out of its usual tight ponytail, her shirt unironed, still wrinkled in a way she found distasteful. “Sorry, I’ve been tired. Why were you looking for me?”

There was no easy way to put it. It wasn’t the best time, but if he didn’t ask now, he might lose his resolve. “Can I go back to school when everyone else does next week?”

“No.”

“I’m falling behind—”

“No.”

“Why not? Everyone else is going to be at school.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Must we have this conversation? Don’t act like a child, Renjun.”

That stung. “I’m not acting like a child,” he said quietly. “How is it any safer here with you than at school with all the professors?”

Renjun saw the moment he crossed the line, her exasperation slipping into anger. He should’ve known not to push it, not when she was already not in her best condition. “You think you’re not safe here? What can your professors do for you that I wouldn’t, that I haven’t? They don’t care about you, but I’ve done everything, everything, to protect you.” She inhaled sharply, and shook her head. “Your professors. Gods. You don’t understand how hard these past few weeks have been on me. You’re so ungrateful, Renjun. ” Her voice trembled, which stunned him. His mother’s voice didn’t tremble. That was like the sky turning green, or Sicheng admitting that he suffered from an ice cream addiction.

If it had been a better day, if he was a better person, maybe he would have found it in himself to comfort her. But he didn’t move. Worse, he thought it served her right.

“What have you done for me? Are you going to tell me that? You took me home, big deal.” His voice wasn’t trembling, but he was, a full body shake. “If that’s everything, if it’s such a burden to have me here, I’d rather fend for myself.”

He pushed past her without looking to see the expression on her face. He wasn’t supposed to talk like this to her—they were family. They were all the family they had. He was supposed to turn back before the ugly edges of his words expanded into cracks he couldn’t fix.

“Get back here, Renjun Huang,” his mother shouted.

He took the stairs down two at a time, Sicheng hot at his heels. He grabbed his jacket, and burst into the night air.

* * *

Running aimlessly got old fast. And it got him some weird looks from the few people he passed. The city never shut down completely, but this part of it didn’t have the attraction of night life. Only a handful of corner stores and liquor shops were open. Running turned into angry walking with his hands shoved in his pockets, but with no one watching to angrily stalk away from, that got old too. After a while he was just walking, hands still in his pockets.

Despite the warm days, the nights were cold, and he was shivering a little. He’d broken curfew completely—ah, his mother’s one measure to keep him safe. He kept down a bitter laugh.

He was getting farther and farther from home. He knew it was stupid, wandering around this late at night with a demon on the loose. He wasn’t sure if day or night mattered to a demon, but with fewer witnesses and limited visibility, it certainly didn’t give Renjun an advantage.

Forget about demons. Maybe someone would try to mug him. He almost wanted someone to, so he could fight someone, something.

He knew he should go home, apologize, stop worrying the one person who was trying to look out for him, unlike anyone else here. But the thought of an apology made him clench his jaw, words sticking deep down in his throat where they congealed into a nasty knot. He couldn’t do it.

He hadn’t had a choice when he was pushed into magic, but eventually he’d made something of it. Finding friends, gaining some modicum of magical ability, slowly and painfully carving out a place for himself there.

Now again he had no choice when it was taken away. Maybe that was the joke. Surprise, we don’t actually take half-humans here. You didn’t know? Whoa, that’s your bad.

Renjun lifted his head at the sound of voices in front of him. He should have paid more attention to their tone. A high, flirtatious question, a soft laugh. He should also have realized he’d walked himself into a narrow alleyway.

In front of him, a man slid his hand around the back of a girl’s head, tracing his lips down her neck, and Renjun had no option but to squeeze past them or back out. Which really meant he had only one option. He started to back out, cursing his shitty luck. Usually he wouldn’t care, but today, all bets were off. Maybe he should squeeze past them.

His foot crunched on an empty chip bag on the ground, and he froze. The man didn’t notice, too busy nosing at the girl’s neck. Gross. But the girl’s head turned at the noise. Okay, and now the night officially couldn’t get any worse.

He should have paid attention to more than their PDA. Hadn’t been using any of his senses, really. Too late now.

It was the ice cream girl, and she saw him.

Sicheng made a distressed meow by his side. Renjun thought the girl might have started to smile, though that could have been the light playing tricks on him, as the man sank his teeth into her neck. Should have noticed that aura too, faint though it was. Turned out older vampires were much better at shielding.

All of it was wrong. The girl was definitely smiling now, and it wasn’t a smile of bliss. She was still looking at Renjun. She was smiling like they were sharing some kind of inside joke, like she couldn’t decide it was more funny that he was watching her getting bitten or that she was being bitten.

Out of the darkness of the alleyway behind the man and the girl, another figure with smudged-up energy approached.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sicheng hissed, clawing at Renjun’s leg. Renjun should have been shocked that Sicheng was speaking, albeit quietly, in front of two humans and a vampire, but he didn’t have enough shock left to react. The other figure stepped into view, still wearing that same white and green baseball cap. He held a knife in his hand.

The man stepped up behind the feeding vampire, raised the knife, and swung.

“Watch out,” Renjun cried, but he was too late again. He only managed to get the vampire to raise his head, dazed and blinking at Renjun in confusion, while the knife stabbed into his back.

The vampire made a wheezing gasp, akin to air rushing out of a pricked balloon. The girl lifted his head from her neck with both hands, and shoved him to the side. He slid off her and sprawled face-down onto the ground, still making little wheezing gasps.

And—shit. No vampire between him and the crazies now.

“I’ll call—someone,” Renjun said. Real eloquent. His language skills were really rising to the occasion. “The police.” It didn’t seem likely that people who knew about vampires, who’d _stab_ one, would care about getting caught, but it was worth a try. He didn’t have many other ideas.

Beside him, Sicheng hissed.

The girl raised an eyebrow with a wry smile, then shook her head. With a last look at Renjun and Sicheng, she and her companion disappeared down the alleyway.

Renjun hadn’t expected them to leave so easily. Were they actually scared of the police? He doubted it, but he didn’t have time to question it further. Once he couldn’t feel their energies anymore, Renjun ran over to the fallen vampire. He was still making a noise, more of a constant moan now.

“What should I do?” Renjun asked, but got no response except a small uptick in the volume of the moan. He didn’t know the first thing about first aid, let alone vampire first aid. Should he pull the knife out? Vampires were supposed to heal fast right? He’d seen it in action plenty of times. Or would that hurt him more? Renjun needed to ask someone who’d know.

With trembling fingers, Renjun dialed a number on his phone. “Pick up, come on, pick up.”

The second ring cut off in the middle, there was a pause, then, “Renjun, didn’t think you’d call. To what do I owe the honor? No, I got it, you don’t need to say it. You reeaallly must have missed me. Wait, let me put you on speaker. Jeno’s here too.”

Like most of his interactions with Jaemin over the phone, Renjun was hit with instant regret. Luckily, this time regret took a backseat to the possibility of someone dying in front of him.

“I need—help.”

The playfulness dropped from Jaemin’s voice in an instant. “What’s wrong?” And Jeno’s uncharacteristically loud, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but a vampire’s hurt, and I don’t know—I don’t know what to do. He got stabbed, and I think he’s hurt real bad.”

“Shit. Stabbed?” Renjun heard some shuffling and shouting in the background. “Hang tight. We’re coming.”

“You’re coming? Is there enough time? He was stabbed in the back. With a knife.” Which, now that he said it, sounded stupidly obvious.

“We’ll be there in 20.” That was half the time it should have taken from their place. “My driver’s a speed demon when he wants to be,” Jaemin said, with a little of his usual humor. It was strained. “It shouldn’t make a difference. If they got him in the heart, he’s dead. If not, 20 minutes won’t change the outcome.”

Jeno and Jaemin talked him through getting the knife out. Firm grip and better to do it fast, they said. Doing it without stabbing the vampire again was an accomplishment in itself, with the way his fingers shook and how their voices garbled at each turn in the road. The vampire moaned when the blade moved, and Renjun almost couldn’t bring himself to go through with it.

Renjun tried to fill his head with song melodies to block out the sound, but he couldn’t pull up anything but children’s tunes. After the knife was out, twinkle twinkle little star kept playing in his head. The melody had veered off tune into harsh, discordant notes. 

Twinkle twinkle little scar. Twinkle twinkle cut through the heart.

Renjun couldn’t tell if it helped when he pulled the knife out. The wound didn’t bleed like he’d thought it would, but it didn’t start to heal either, like Jaemin said it was supposed to. It left a gaping hole through layers of lesh, the sides blackened as if burned.

The vampire didn’t make any more noise.

Renjun didn’t know how much time had passed before Jeno and Jaemin arrived. It didn’t feel like twenty minutes. Felt like he’d blinked and they arrived, the minutes in between lost and unaccounted for.

Jaemin reached down and picked up the knife. “Shit, Jeno, the knife’s silver.”

“You’re not serious. They shouldn’t have silver unless…”

“It was a set up,” Renjun said, because he couldn’t seem to stop stating the obvious. Twinkle twinkle little star jangled somewhere in the back of his head. “There were two of them.” He looked behind himself, expecting to see a horde of vampires, but Jaemin and Jeno stood alone. “Where are...please tell me you brought someone else. Where’s your driver?”

“Our parents are on their way,” Jaemin said soothingly. He reached over as if to rub Renjun’s back, but Jeno got there first. On a normal day Renjun might have pulled away, but tonight he let himself lean into it. Jeno’s hand tensed as Renjun shifted closer to him, but he didn’t draw away. Renjun let himself feel the way Jeno’s touch lingered between his shoulder blades. Jeno felt solid and real, and it gave him more comfort than he was willing to admit.

“My driver is with the car. He’s…” Jaemin shifted uncomfortably. “Human.”

The word kickballed around Renjun’s skull for a bit before fading, compartmentalized away with a small discordant note. It wasn’t unexpected.

“At least they didn’t entirely know what they were doing, or their aim was bad. They missed the heart,” Jeno said.

“Yeah, he might still make it,” Jaemin said. “It’s a good thing you got the knife out. It would have poisoned him more the longer it stayed in him.”

“I thought you said twenty minutes didn’t matter.”

“I didn’t think the knife would be silver. Of course we’re warned about this, but no one expects to see a silver knife. It’s not cost-effective or any more useful than a normal knife.” Unless you were going vampire hunting, but Jaemin didn’t need to say that.

“So it’s true that vampires are scared of silver crosses?” Renjun asked.

Jeno threw him a look of disgust. “We can touch silver. It’s just if it gets inside us that’s the problem.”

“Yeah, like that one time my cousin’s brother thought it would be funny to lace his blood pouch with silver dust. He kept throwing up for days, and his brother got sent underground for a year.”

Jaemin examined the fallen vampire’s face. “He’s part of one of the Park branch families. A very peripheral one, but Jisung’s family should still be told. You think one of the other vampire families did it?”

Jeno frowned. “I can’t think of anyone who has a vendetta against the Parks, and even if they did, why would they go after someone with no standing?”

“They were humans,” Renjun interrupted. “The ones who did it, and they didn’t look like human pets.” 

“How can you tell?”

“They didn’t have ‘I adore my vampire master’ written all over them. It’s hard not to tell.” 

Jaemin winced.

Sicheng started clawing at Renjun’s leg again, but Renjun ignored him, suddenly remembering what he had to tell Jeno. “One of them was the girl. You remember? The ice cream shop girl.”

“Ice cream?”

“Yeah, the one we ran into—”

Sicheng meowed.

“Sicheng, what—”

“Oh? I almost thought you forgot about me. You didn’t even say hi earlier.” The girl stood in the opening of the alleyway.

Renjun leapt to his feet. Jeno and Jaemin tensed, as if readying for a fight, but Renjun grabbed both their wrists.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. 

Jeno nudged his hand out of Renjun’s grip. “We can take her.”

Jaemin nodded. “I’m with Jeno on this one. Plus, we can’t just leave him.” He jerked a thumb at the vampire on the ground.

Renjun tugged futilely at Jaemin’s wrist, irrational apprehension churning in his stomach.

“Renjun, let go,” Jaemin said gently.

“I really don’t think this is a good idea…” Renjun’s words died on his lips when he turned and saw the baseball cap man at the other side of the alleyway. They were surrounded.

Sicheng stared up at Renjun helplessly. He couldn’t change in front of Jeno and Jaemin. He hissed at the girl, who might actually be off in the head, all her other odd behavior aside, because for a good second she took her attention off the still-quite-dangerous vampires to glare at the not-so-dangerous cat.

“You take the girl and I’ll take the other one?” Jaemin said.

“Sounds like a plan.”

Jeno and Jaemin grinned at each other. Renjun had a strong urge to bash their heads together, but that’d probably kill the few remaining brain cells they had left. Jaemin darted toward the man, and Jeno’s hand dissolved into smoke.

The girl whipped out a gun, faster than Renjun thought someone could physically move if they weren’t a vampire. “I really didn’t want to use silver bullets for this,” she said, watching Jeno. “Move, and I’ll blow a hole in you.”

If the mention of silver shocked Jeno, he didn’t show it. But his hand did resolidify, and he watched her the same way she watched him, through half slit, wary eyes. Renjun could tell Jeno wouldn’t be still for long. He was probably running calculations in his head, gauging how fast he could close the gap between them compared to how fast she could pull the trigger. Behind them, Renjun heard a grunt. It wasn’t Jaemin’s voice, and he hoped that was a good sign. Renjun gathered his magic at his fingertips.

“Or don’t, and I’ll blow a hole in you anyway,” the girl said. In one swift movement, the girl lifted the gun, her finger tight on the trigger. Jeno’s knees bent to spring. Renjun poured all his magic into throwing up a shield between the girl and Jeno, not sure if it’d do anything, but hoping that it would at least deflect the path of the bullet or slow it down.

But the girl didn’t point the gun at Jeno. She pointed it at him. She winked, and pulled the trigger two times, in quick succession.

A force slammed into Renjun, throwing him into the pavement. His back hit solid concrete, knocking the air from his lungs. Pain spiked up through his back, disorienting him enough that he couldn’t understand where the weight on top of him was coming from. Or why there’d be a weight. He needed to—needed to...make a shield, protect Jeno. Renjun tried to struggle up, but the weight pinned him against the ground. He stopped struggling long enough to blink the spots out of his vision, and Jeno’s face materialized into form above him.

Jeno had pushed him out of the way—had saved him.

Panic surged wildly in Renjun’s chest until he saw that Jeno wasn’t looking down at him with pain, but with concern. Somehow, the bullets must have missed them both.

Then Renjun registered a low hiss behind him. He turned toward the noise in time to see Jaemin stagger, clutching his side. The baseball cap man was down on the ground, not moving. One arm looked like it’d been broken, and a knife lay on the ground beside him. The knife was clean, devoid of Jaemin’s blood. Renjun didn’t understand how Jaemin had gotten hurt, not until he saw the small circle between Jaemin’s fingers. One of the bullets that had missed them had hit Jaemin instead. Panic bubbled back up in Renjun’s chest, thicker this time, choking with rage and fear.

Jeno pushed himself up off Renjun. The movement wasn’t right, too slow, and Jeno was leaning a bit to the side, tilted off-axis as if he couldn’t find his balance. Renjun saw then that he’d been wrong. Jeno had hidden his pain well, but there it was. How had Renjun missed it? A bullet in his right shoulder.

“You’re injured,” Renjun whispered.

“Not so much that I can’t take care of this,” Jeno said, but he couldn’t even speak without a hitch in his breath.

“No,” Renjun said. No matter what Jeno said, the pain, or worse, the poison, was getting to him. He was still tilted to the right, and Renjun saw the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

Over Jeno’s shoulder, Renjun saw the girl raise the gun again.

No. It repeated itself over and over in his head, slamming against the side of his skull.

Renjun’s blood roared in his ears. Or maybe that was his anger. Or his magic. At the moment they felt like one and the same.

* * *

Jeno saw Renjun rise to his feet.

“Get down,” he snarled, and when Renjun didn’t respond, he reached over to pull him down or behind him, somewhere out of the way. Renjun turned toward him, and caught his hand first.

“Yes, you should,” Renjun said, and jerked on Jeno’s arm. The pull wasn’t strong, but at the same time, Renjun’s magic hooked into Jeno in that way he’d become so familiar with, and _pulled._ Jeno felt some of his strength, his aura, being siphoned out of him. He fought against it, resisting the way it made him feel, but the pull was inexorable. He sank down. His shoulder burned like hell, and now he couldn’t tell if his lightheadedness came from the silver or from what Renjun had done to him. “Renjun,” he said. He meant to speak it into a curse, but what it was, was a libation, a plea. 

“Sorry,” Renjun said. His hand briefly cupped Jeno’s face with a strange tenderness, but when he stood it was gone. Only that wild-eyed, off-kilter stare remained.

Jeno felt it pass by him, a massive presence opening its maw, ready to swallow whole, to devour. Every hair on his neck stood up. As a child, Jeno had been afraid of monsters in the closet. Funny, when he knew that humans saw him as a monster. Humans were weird like that. The monsters Jeno envisioned didn’t come with porcelain skin and pretty temptations. They came with eyes the size of dinner plates, too many heads, feathers and scales and boils bursting with acid.

They weren’t real monsters either. Jeno would say this was a monster, if there wasn’t something of Renjun mixed up in there.

He didn’t see it—couldn’t—and maybe that was better for his sanity. What he could see was the girl backing up, the gun dropping from her hand, her mouth opening, eyes widening, all of it going impossibly wide. The muscles around her throat strained, but no sound came out.

Jeno had seen many different sides of Renjun over the year, but he barely recognized the boy standing in front of him now. Renjun watched impassively as the girl started to bend over, clutching her chest. His cat sprang over to his side. Renjun’s eyes flashed yellow, then back to brown. He didn’t look like he was enjoying it, but when the girl made a pitiful noise, his tongue came out and wet his lower lip. It dawned on Jeno that Renjun wasn’t going to stop.

Jeno forced himself to one foot, then the other. He put a hand on Renjun’s shoulder, and shook. Renjun didn’t respond.

“Cut it out,” he said, and shook harder.

Renjun’s head whipped toward him, teeth bared in a snarl. Jeno thought he felt that monstrous presence swing toward him, and despite his years of training, it was hard not to back away. Renjun’s magic swirled around him, swirled within that presence. It didn’t have any of its usual softness, edges sharp as broken glass. 

“Renjun, stop,” Jeno said. “You don’t want to do this.”

Renjun stared at him. He stared back. Renjun saw him, but Jeno wasn’t sure he recognized him. That dark, hungry look in his eyes didn’t change. 

Renjun’s magic swirled around him still, getting closer, almost close enough to cut. It stopped bare centimeters away from his skin.

Neither of them moved. Then Renjun blinked a couple times. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, you’re right.”

* * *

Renjun’s stomach flipped over. He tried not to close his eyes as he dug a finger into Jaemin’s flesh and grasped the silver bullet. Jaemin winced when he pulled it out, but didn’t make a sound. The edges of the hole left in his side, right under his ribs, had already started to go black. The two humans still lay where they’d fallen, unconscious, some distance away.

“Thanks,” Jaemin mumbled, his eyes closed. “Feeling better already.”

Renjun couldn’t tell if he was serious. He was a little delirious, and kept trying to say he was fine. At the side, Jeno was working out the bullet from his shoulder.

“Will he be okay?” Renjun asked Jeno.

“He’ll heal. Once he gets some blood in him, it should be okay.” Jeno sounded calm, but his brow creased when he looked at Jaemin. Jeno didn’t look in great shape himself.

“I’m…” Jaemin’s breath hitched. “...right here...you guys.”

“Stop trying to talk, idiot,” Jeno said.

“Make...me.”

Renjun looked from Jeno to Jaemin and back to Jeno. He looked down at his arms. Sicheng seemed to understand because he meowed at Renjun plaintively.

Renjun knelt down beside Jaemin and held his wrist over Jaemin’s mouth.

“Take some,” he said. Jaemin’s eyes fluttered open. His pupils dilated when he saw the proximity of Renjun’s wrist, but he turned his head. Sicheng flicked his tail once, with clear irritation, and padded away like he wasn’t going to be a part of this.

“Renjun...you don’t have to.”

Jaemin was really going to choose now of all times to be stubborn. Even out of it as he was, he managed to infuriate Renjun. It was practically a talent at this point. “Don’t make me shove it down your throat. Because I will.”

Jaemin’s lips curved into a weak half-smile. “I know you will.” He wasn’t quite looking at Renjun, his eyes glazed over. He was losing focus fast.

Renjun pressed his pulse point against Jaemin’s lips. Jaemin’s pupils dilated further. He closed his eyes, and sucked in a breath. “Stop holding back,” Renjun said. Why was he so damn stubborn?

Jaemin didn’t move for another couple seconds, but he didn’t turn his head away, resting his lips against Renjun’s pulse. “Fine,” he said, a little breathlessly. “Fine, okay.”

Renjun shivered as Jaemin put one hand around Renjun’s wrist and nipped at it, breaking through the skin. He mouthed at it, sucking weakly, letting gravity do more of the work.

Renjun held out his other hand to Jeno. “Come here,” he said.

Jeno’s throat worked. His gaze landed on Jaemin’s mouth on Renjun’s wrist, traveled over to Renjun’s outstretched hand, then trailed up to his neck, where it stayed.

“Hurry up, while I’m asking nicely,” Renjun said. 

Jeno walked mutely to his side, and put gentle fingers around Renjun’s wrist. Renjun fisted his fingers in Jeno’s hair and pulled him to his throat instead. The rough movement pulled a growl from Jeno’s throat.

Meanwhile, Renjun felt Jaemin let go of his wrist. Renjun tried to press his wrist against Jaemin’s mouth again, but Jaemin shook his head. “I’m good.” He did look a little better, eyes more in focus, less crazy pale. “Need to rest.” And because he was Jaemin and had to be irritating until the end, he added, “Tasting good, Jun.” He closed his eyes.

Jeno whined against Renjun’s throat. “Focus on me,” he said. Like it was easy not to. Like Renjun wasn’t doing that already, more than he wanted to, more than he should.

“What else would I be doing?” Renjun said, and Jeno’s teeth sank into his neck.

* * *

“What else would I be doing?” Renjun said. His eyes flashed in defiance.

Before Jeno could think twice about it, he was biting into the tender spot on Renjun’s neck. Not his shoulder, not above his collarbone. He wanted to wipe the defiance off Renjun’s face.

Renjun’s eyes narrowed, like he knew what Jeno was doing and he wasn’t going to give into it. But he couldn’t hide the little hitch in his breath. Jeno drank it up. Renjun kept trying to act like it wasn’t affecting him as much as usual, staring defiantly up at him, even as his breathing became shallow and uneven. 

Jeno would see how long Renjun could keep the act up. He ran his left hand over the side of Renjun’s neck, and Renjun titled his head back involuntarily. When he caught himself, his eyes widened and the tops of his cheekbones went pink.

It was unexpectedly pretty, enough that Jeno lifted his head and stopped feeding to look at it more closely.

He wasn’t about to let Renjun know that though. “I think that’s enough,” he said casually.

Renjun’s hand jumped up to his throat. “Wait, that’s it—?” he halted mid-sentence, the color above his cheek bones darkening.

Jeno couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across his face. Jeno:1. Renjun:0. When Renjun saw it, he shoved Jeno in the chest. “You…” he hissed.

Jeno let Renjun’s shove push him backward, which Renjun clearly wasn’t expecting. His eyes widened further, almost comical, as the momentum carried him forward. It made Renjun trip, which would have been hilarious if Jeno’s legs didn’t choose to give out on him at the same time. The blood would take a minute to get into his system, it’d been a rough night, and he hadn’t realized how much it’d weakened him. He still didn’t know if it was because of the silver, or because of Renjun, but either way, he didn’t like it.

They both tumbled to the ground. Renjun landed on top of him, his chest pressed against Jeno’s. His face was so close that Jeno could see the flecks of gold in his eyes. His eyes were still frozen in that wide stare, his mouth had parted slightly, his face flushed. His heartbeat racketed upward as he stared down at Jeno, beating against Jeno’s chest like a little bird’s.

He looked beautiful like this.

That was a new thought. Renjun was pretty in an objective way, for a witch, a witch-human, a human-witch—whatever. Hadn’t always been, if the old photos in his house were any indication, but he’d grown into his features the way some people grow into an older sibling’s overlarge hand-me-downs. Jeno knew he wasn’t the only one who thought that.

Pretty didn’t mean much to Jeno. He’d grown up surrounded by pretty, and by the time of puberty, pretty was throwing itself at him.

But beautiful? Beautiful was new.

Renjun’s breath came out in little puffs against Jeno’s lips, and his dark bangs fell into his eyes. Jeno wanted to bite him again.

Or just keep him there. Or—something. His brain might have stopped working.

He didn’t do any of that before Renjun scrambled up off him. Renjun brushed off his clothes, breathing harder than usual. He avoided Jeno’s eyes when he offered a hand to pull Jeno up.

“We should—check on Jaemin. Yeah,” Renjun said. His heart was still beating impossibly fast.

“Yeah,” Jeno said, taking the hand.

“Jaemin’s doing okay. Thanks for asking,” Jaemin said from the ground, his eyes still closed.

“You would talk about yourself in the third person,” Renjun mumbled under his breath. “I thought you were going to rest,” he said louder, complaining, but he didn’t try to hide the undercurrent of relief beneath his irritation.

“I am resting,” Jaemin insisted. He didn’t sound like he was in pain. Jaemin was good at that. It would have fooled Jeno too, if he didn’t see how Jaemin’s fingers on his side were slightly taut still.

Jeno knelt down beside Jaemin and lifted the hand. The circular hole in Jaemin’s side hadn’t closed up, but it wasn’t large. Some of the blackness was fading. The burning in his own shoulder had gone from sharp to a throbbing dullness. The blood really helped, with the pain and with clearing his mind. “How is it?” he asked.

“It’s not too bad,” Jaemin said. Which Jeno didn’t trust because it came from Jaemin.

“Don’t lie. Even my shoulder feels like it’ll be out of commission for a while.”

Jaemin laughed, dry and crackly. “Ow, okay, I shouldn’t laugh. It does hurt like a bitch, if that’s what you’re asking. But it doesn’t feel like I’m going to die. I’ll be okay.”

“It’s that bad?” Renjun asked. He rubbed at his wrist. “Is there anything I can—?”

“I’ll be okay,” Jaemin said.

By the time the other vampires arrived, Jaemin could sit up. He leaned heavily on Jeno. It was the only weakness he showed, and even then he shifted his position so it didn’t look like he needed the support. Renjun stood to the side, his gaze dark and a little unrecognizable.

* * *

Renjun sat apart from the vampires. A couple of them had gathered up the two humans and whisked them away somewhere. Others crowded around Jaemin and Jeno. Renjun saw their parents among them. Renjun thought it was weird that Jaemin and Jeno were getting more attention than the vampire that had a gaping stab wound in his back, but he didn’t say anything.

No one spoke to him. He could probably leave without them noticing. Sicheng kept prowling back and forth in front of him.

The smudged-up part of the girl’s energy had turned out to be an outer shell, and underneath that shell was pure glowing energy that he could tear into as much as he liked. No, not liked. As much as he had to. He’d had to do it.

“Jeno said you were here first?” A voice said. Renjun lifted his head to see a tall, elegant vampire standing next to him. He’d been among the vampires by Jaemin and Jeno earlier, and must have detached from that bubble to come over. Some of the other vampires still by Jeno and Jaemin were watching them. Renjun felt uneasy.

“Huh? Yes.”

“I see. No one but you?”

“No. Just my familiar, him, and the two humans.”

“I see,” the vampire said again, as if it were a revelation, when Renjun was sure Jaemin and Jeno had already relayed this basic level of information. “You are not injured.” It was an observation, not a question. When Renjun didn’t respond, the vampire spoke again. “I believe I remember your mother. You are the Huang child, yes?”

Renjun bristled at the derision in his voice. “I am,” he said.

“She didn’t know of your whereabouts tonight?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“I see,” the vampire said, and went back to the circle of vampires, leaving Renjun alone again. 

It was as if he didn’t exist again—they didn’t even look in his direction, and he couldn’t see Jaemin or Jeno through the wall of vampires surrounding them. He doubted anyone would stop him if he stood up now and walked out. He considered going home, even though he didn’t want to face his mother on top of everything else.

His eyes were starting to burn from trying not to blink, but he kept them open for as long as he could, blinked rapidly in between, and forced them open again.

Because each time he closed his eyes, the whole sequence replayed in his head. Unleashing everything within him, riding that rush of power and hunger, and ripping, ripping at the surface of the girl’s energy until it cracked and split open like a ripe melon. Devouring.

But in his head, he devoured and devoured. He didn’t have to stop. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little late this week, but i still made it before the end of wednesday! this chapter somehow got longer than my usual so it took foreverrr to edit
> 
> the whole last half is pretty gratuitous, and you may ask, did it have to be that way? no. but also yes.


	31. i'm not okay

Renjun should have refused when the vampires offered to drive him home. They put him in a car by himself, saying that Jeno and Jaemin needed to be taken home as quickly as possible for treatment. Which—true. Renjun couldn’t complain about that.

He sat in the back, Sicheng on his lap. He’d thought another vampire would take shotgun, so he’d gone straight for the backseat, but no one joined them in the car aside from the driver.

He considered himself lucky that the driver was a vampire and not one of the human pets. When he’d followed the vampires to their cars, lined up one after the other and all shiny black like a poor parody of a mafia movie—were the vampires trying to live up to the goth aesthetic?—he’d seen enough of that.

Humans hopped out of the cars, rushing to open doors for the vampires that strode over, tracking each movement of the vampires with adoring, googly eyes. This, when the vampires didn’t spare them a glance while sliding into their seats. Renjun thought he felt a touch of magic in the energy of one of the drivers. He had turned away, feeling sick.

He still felt sick, his stomach churning unhappily. It wasn’t a total loss because he couldn’t exactly feel hungry when he felt nauseous.

The vampire driver watched him through the rearview mirror, but didn’t try to make small talk. He scrutinized Renjun enough that Renjun wondered if he had something on his face, or between his teeth.

When they pulled up to his home and the vampire parked, Renjun pulled on the door handle but it wouldn’t budge from inside. They’d child locked the car.

“Wait a moment,” the vampire said, exiting the car. Maybe it was vampire protocol to have someone else open the door for you. Renjun wouldn’t be surprised, since he didn’t recall seeing any of the vampires open their own doors. Not that he’d been paying that much attention. But the vampire continued past Renjun, and took the steps up to the front door of Renjun’s home.

Renjun’s mother threw open the door before the vampire could knock. She was dressed like she was about to go out, in heeled boots and a jacket, her hair pulled back tight. Renjun felt the guilt then. She’d probably done searching magic because of him, a complex and time consuming piece of magic that could drain a lesser witch for a couple days. She looked past the vampire and honed in on Renjun through the car window. She pointed at him and spoke to the vampire, her hands flying around in increasingly angry gestures from whatever he replied. One short talk later, both of them walked back to the car and she slid into the backseat beside him.

When she saw him, the bite on his neck impossible to hide, her face crumpled. “Renjun, what have you done?”

* * *

Renjun and his mother stood in front of seats that spread upward in circular rows above them. There were a couple balcony alcoves with additional seating. Renjun had never seen so many vampires gathered together, not even in the assembly meetings YangYang had spied on. Renjun spied Jeno leaning on his good arm over the railing of one balcony alcove, with Jaemin sitting in a chair by his side. They were bandaged up, and Jaemin still appeared paler than usual, but otherwise he wouldn’t have guessed they’d just come back from being shot.

They’d gathered several witches too. Some faces Renjun recognized from YangYang’s spying, but he couldn’t put names to them. The one witch he did know was Professor Seo, who sat in the front row. 

When Professor Seo had passed them earlier, he’d put a hand on Renjun’s shoulder. “I don’t believe any of it,” he’d said, to Renjun’s bewilderment. Believe any of what?

Renjun still didn’t know, but he could use the friendly face. Most of the faces ranged from impassiveness to open hostility, and they were all watching him and his mother. Renjun had scanned the crowd for anyone else he knew, and thought he caught a glimpse of Chenle passing by, trying to mouth something at him, but he hadn’t been able to find him again. 

A woman who was clearly the vampire head honcho walked up to them. Renjun remembered Professor Seo calling her Taeyeon. She didn’t need to ask for quiet, because the vampires had already been watching in silence.

“Please, take a seat,” Taeyeon said, waving at two chairs Renjun hadn’t noticed before. They must have been placed silently behind them in the past several minutes.

“I would prefer to stand,” his mother said, her hand tight on his. She hadn’t held his hand in years, and it transported him uncomfortably back to when he was 10, diminutive and helpless in the way of a 10 year old. Renjun didn’t understand the rules of this game. Was standing a power move, or nothing at all?

“Very well,” Taeyeon said.

Renjun was told to recount what had happened, and he did, speaking of the vampire in the alleyway, calling Jaemin and Jeno, the fight, the bullets. He didn’t go into the details of his part in it, but Taeyeon seemed satisfied with his blanket statement of “I tried to use magic to help”, like she expected nothing more of him.

After he finished, they dragged out the ice cream girl and the baseball cap man onto the floor. Renjun couldn’t find smudges in either of their energies anymore. The girl’s energy was a bare flicker.  _ It would be a pity to leave that bit behind. _ He didn’t know where that thought had come from. He shoved it away, along with the curl of hunger that licked up into his stomach with it.

“Did you know these two before tonight?” Taeyeon asked.

Renjun understood then what this was. “No. But, I mean, I’ve seen them? She,” Renjun pointed at the ice cream girl, “works at an ice cream shop I go to. She did try to talk to me before.”

Taeyeon did not react, simply turned and asked his mother the same question, which didn’t make much sense because his mother never went to the ice cream shop. Renjun could’ve told them that. He didn’t get why some of the onlookers looked upset when his mother said that no, she hadn’t known them.

The questioning turned toward the two humans. Who were they? Why had they done this? Did they know Renjun or his mother?

The necks of both humans were a patchwork of bitemarks. Now more than ever Renjun wished he could hide the mark on his own neck. It felt like a brand, a cattle mark.

The man was half awake, but he answered each question with enthusiasm. He couldn’t have been lying, not when his eagerness to please made bile rise in the back of Renjun’s throat, but his answers didn’t make much sense.

Who was he? Recent uni grad, hadn’t found a job related to his major yet so he was waiting tables while he looked. Doesn’t remember having a knife. Attacked them? Why would he attack them? Didn’t know about vampires before, but he sure does know about them now. Will they bite him again? Because damn that shit’s good.

While he spoke, the girl’s head lolled to the side. The vampire holding the girl by her arms had to shake her to get her to open one glazed-over eye. They had to repeat the first question—who are you?—several times to get a response out of her, and when they got one it started slow and flat.

Who are they? Who is…? She started to shake, turning her head from side to side in bewilderment. Who am I? Who  _ am I? _ Why can’t I remember? Why—? Her head lolled to the side again.

Renjun would’ve stumbled backward away from her, if his mother’s hand didn’t hold him in place.

“Memory loss,” Taeyeon said after the two were taken away. “Are you capable of magic that would cause that?”

Renjun’s mother stiffened. “I would never—”

“But are you capable of it?”

His mother’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”

Taeyeon closed the gap between them in slow steps, until she stood a step away from Renjun’s mother. Watching them was a strange betrayal of eyesight. Taeyeon was shorter, but it felt like she was the one staring down at his mother. 

“Relax. I do not think you’ve cast memory magic on them. Memory magic would be more subtle, yes? They have no memories to replace the ones they’ve lost. This type of memory loss seems like demon possession, does it not?”

His mother did not relax. “It does seem that way.”

“I’m sorry to ask this,” Taeyeon said, and she didn’t seem sorry at all, “but I must be direct. Are either of you involved with any cases of demon possession?”

“No,” his mother said. Renjun echoed her, but Taeyeon barely spared him a glance.

She directly addressed his mother. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the Park case. Are you, and have you ever been involved with him?”

“I know where you’re trying to go with this,” his mother snapped. She’d never been good at reining in her temper for very long. It was one of the bad traits he’d inherited from her. “I’m not involved with any of this. I don’t know about those humans, and I don’t know about Park. Park attacked my son. You think I would put my own son in danger for that?”

Taeyeon observed her. “You’re not lying.”

“I wouldn’t lie about this.”

Taeyeon continued to observe her, impassive. “I know your husband was killed by one of ours; I remember that trial.”

His mother’s grip tightened on his hand until it was painful. He squeezed her hand, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“I remember you saying you wished to see us all dead. Words of grief, I’m sure, but I wonder if they still hold true. Tell me, do they?”

“No,” his mother said.

Taeyeon shook her head, and her long hair fanned out around her face. In that moment, she looked more of a cold, avenging angel than a vampire. “You lie,” she said.

* * *

They didn’t ask Renjun any more questions after that. All of the questions went straight to his mother.

After over an hour of questioning, they could not connect Renjun’s mother with Park or the demons, but they got a confession that she had once entertained the thought of summoning a demon for vengeance, and that was condemnation enough.

Renjun’s hand had gone numb, but he didn’t want to let go of her. He was afraid that once he did she’d be somehow lost to him. If not to the vampires, then to memories that didn’t have him in them.

Without evidence of wrongdoing, they couldn’t imprison her or do worse, though more than a few vampires were in favor of bypassing that rule. They voted to put her under house arrest, with vampires monitoring her every move.

All the witches in the room voted in favor of this, even Professor Seo. Renjun wanted to shout at him, say, you said you didn’t believe it, but his eyes were drawn up and away to that one balcony alcove. Jaemin’s head was bowed, his gaze directed toward the ground. Jeno stood with his hands on the railing. His face was an impassive mask.

* * *

Professor Seo took Renjun away in his old brown sedan. They didn’t let Renjun say goodbye to his mother. He watched her retreating back as she walked up the steps to their door between two vampires, her back straight. She didn’t try to look behind her.

It was the bite Renjun had wanted so much to hide that had gotten him out of the same fate. The logic was that if he’d given Jeno and Jaemin blood he couldn’t be a vampire hater, and the evidence was right there. And anyway, they’d asked him point blank if he’d ever wanted to kill a vampire.

“You said you didn’t believe any of it,” Renjun shot at Seo as soon as the car door closed.

“I don’t.”

“Then why—” Renjun’s magic flared, questing toward Professor Seo. Sicheng jumped into his lap with a meow. Renjun closed his eyes and gripped Sicheng’s fur, trying to swallow down the fury and the magic boiling up with it. “Then why,” he said, when he could speak without trying to bite Seo’s head off. He still wanted to, but that wasn’t going to change anytime soon. “Did you vote to put her under house arrest?”

Professor Seo sighed. “The vampires wouldn’t have been appeased with any less. Not with what happened tonight, on top of what Park did. This is incredibly bad timing when we’d just negotiated to give them Park to keep our alliance.”

“So you needed a scapegoat,” Renjun said. His fingers dug into his leg.

Professor Seo didn’t deny it. The street lights illuminated the new creases in his forehead and grey in his hair. “There are punishments far worse than house arrest, and if she hadn’t been put under house arrest, you can trust me that someone would have found a way to punish her themselves.”

Professor Seo tried to catch Renjun’s eye, but Renjun resolutely stared out the window instead.

“Look on the bright side—” And Renjun’s temper flared, almost upsetting the delicate equilibrium keeping his magic down. What bright side? “—none of the vampires will risk trying anything if she’s under watch. In a way she is under Taeyeon’s protection, which will keep her safe.”

Another chunk of the ride passed in silence before Professor Seo cleared his throat. Probably about to make another attempt at small talk, like Renjun hadn’t ignored the first two. Renjun could see where Johnny got his amiability from—the few times he’d been around Johnny had been easy in a way he didn’t expect with acquaintances. But now Renjun would’ve preferred to stew in silence. Did Professor Seo not get the leave me the fuck alone vibes he was putting out?

“Your mother said you wanted to come back to the academy,” Professor Seo said.

That got Renjun to stop fiddling around with his phone, opening and closing the same three apps and pretending he was interested in their content. “She did?” Also, Seo got to talk to her? How was that fair? “She didn’t want me to come back.” He coughed a little to dispel the bitter taste in the back of his throat. His next words slipped out, unplanned and traitorous. “You know, sometimes I think she’d be happier if I had no magic at all.”

“What makes you think that?” Professor Seo said, and some hint of sincerity in his voice got Renjun to put down his phone altogether. “She may not have the best view of the academy, but I’ve spoken to her, and I guarantee you that she’s proud to have raised a witch who has learned as much as you in such a short time.”

It was terrible to hear this second hand, because Renjun didn’t know what she’d said and what she hadn’t, yet still he drank in each word hook, line, and sinker. He wanted to ask if she’d really said that, and what her words were exactly, but the questions went sticky somewhere between his lungs and his throat and never made it all the way out.

Professor Seo graced Renjun with a smile, all fatherly like he thought that’d be helpful. Showed how much he knew. “It might not mean much to you, but I was glad to hear you wanted to come back,” he said.

Renjun leaned his head against the top of his seatbelt. “Thanks,” he said tonelessly.

So. He’d made it back, just like he’d wanted, but now that he was here, he didn’t want it so much anymore. Funny how that worked.

* * *

Professor Seo had negotiated to have Professor Koon keep an eye on Renjun while at the academy, which pretty much meant he had free reign of the place as usual. Within the boundaries of the new rules for demons, of course.

“Least I could do,” Seo said. The sympathy of it made Renjun’s insides curdle.

* * *

Sicheng seemed to be recovering from whatever problem he’d been having. He still had days when he fell asleep for long hours, but not nearly as often. He still wouldn’t tell Renjun what was going on with him, no matter how Renjun prodded.

“It’s clearly not nothing,” Renjun protested, but Sicheng was good at having selective hearing when he wanted to.

Renjun didn’t try too hard to pry. It was enough that whatever it was, it seemed to be passing. To Renjun’s dismay, it also meant Sicheng regained his appetite, which Renjun discovered when he found the snack pantry raided overnight. Sicheng feigned innocence, but he wasn’t fooling anyone.

While Sicheng’s rest became less laboured, Renjun started to have trouble sleeping. He kept waking up in the middle of the night, sometimes in a cold sweat.

He’d be too disoriented to recall but a single fragment. A single image. The two running boys, and Donghyuck’s turning head. The other boy never turned around.

* * *

Donghyuck nearly bowled Renjun over when he got back to their apartment at the end of the week, and for the first time Renjun was actually glad to be back. Donghyuck slung an arm around Renjun’s shoulder and pulled them both down to the ground. When they sat cross-legged on the floor, Donghyuck leaned over to Renjun and whispered in his ear, “I have something to tell you.”

Renjun shoved Donghyuck’s hand off his shoulder. “What’s with the dramatics? There’s just the two of us here.” Renjun wasn’t even lying because Sicheng was sleeping in his room.

Donghyuck whipped out his phone. He was buzzing with excitement, literally buzzing, his energy shooting off sparks in every direction. “Take a look at this.”

Renjun had just enough time to make out the words training squadron and a list of names before Donghyuck snatched his phone back. He punched the air, shook Renjun by the shoulder, and whooped. “I made it. I fucking made it!”

“You made what?”

“The training squadrons, can’t you read? Okay, not yet, but this is as close as it gets.”

Renjun wrenched himself out of Donghyuck’s grasp. “I thought you couldn’t join the training squadrons until fifth year, and isn’t there an initiation process?”

“Oh, so you do pay attention.”

“Not funny, Donghyuck. Explain.” Renjun tried not to sound like he felt, like the world was spiraling out from beneath his feet. It was lucky that Donghyuck was still starry-eyed and not paying much attention, because Renjun didn’t think he succeeded.

“Because of the demon threat, they’ve scrapped initiation—everyone who’s got the skills and a pair is getting a shoo-in. I thought that might happen, but I had no idea that they were going to tap a few of us fourth years to try out for a spot. Obviously none of us have pairs yet, but they said they’ll train us first. They think a lot of us have potential to be compatible this year, so they might try to get us to pair up early.” 

“Oh.” Oh. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Donghyuck scratched the back of his head and ducked down a bit, about the closest to shyness that he’d get. “I didn’t want to jinx it.”

He looked at Renjun expectantly. Praise was in order, or at least congratulations, but Renjun’s throat had gone dry. Bone dry, Sahara desert dry. Donghyuck peered closer at Renjun’s face, and when Renjun couldn’t twist it into some semblance of happiness, his grin faltered.

“What’s that look for?”

Renjun’s tongue felt thick. “Are you—are you sure it’s a good idea?” he croaked.

The remnants of Donghyuck’s grin vanished. “Am I sure it’s a good idea?” he repeated. “Are you kidding me?”

“I don’t know, Hyuck, it’s just that with the demons, joining a training squadron could be dangerous.” 

Donghyuck sat up straighter, pulling away from Renjun. He was incredulous. “Of course it’s dangerous. What did you think, that a training squadron was all sunshine and rainbows? It’s supposed to be dangerous. What’s bringing this on?”

Renjun chewed on his tongue, hesitating, and missed his chance.

Donghyuck ran a hand through his hair. “Shit, Renjun. Is it so hard to be happy for me for once?”

“I had a dream—”

“Don’t we all—”

“Where if you join a training squadron something bad happens to you.”

Donghyuck shook his head. Renjun was losing him. He could see it happening in real time, the pull away, the close-mouthed smile directed at the ground. “Seriously? That’s a lame excuse.”

“It’s not an excuse,” Renjun protested.

Donghyuck rose to his feet, brushing imaginary dust off his pants. “You know, if you were jealous of me, you could’ve just said so.”

It was a parting shot, a conversation closed, but like most of Donghyuck’s parting shots, it had Renjun back on his feet, his hackles rising. “I’m not jealous of you,” Renjun snapped.

“Sure you aren’t,” Donghyuck sneered. He bent closer, cobra-like, without breaking eye contact. “And if we’re talking about dreams, this is my dream. This has been my dream since I was, what, 5 years old? You knew that, or did you just forget?” He pushed past Renjun to his room. Right before he walked in, he whirled back, and said, “You  _ knew _ that.”

Renjun rocked back on his heels. The backs of his calves hit the side of the couch, and when his knees caved, he let them, sitting down hard on the cushions.

* * *

Maybe it was stupid. Donghyuck had always been able to take care of himself. It was just a dream.

* * *

When Renjun knocked on Donghyuck’s door later with a bottle of wine and a quiet, “Sorry”, Donghyuck let him in without a word.

They talked about what had happened with the vampires over break, as if Renjun hadn’t already told him everything over the phone. Well, almost everything. He neglected to mention his part in taking the girl down. He was trying very hard not to dwell on it.

Donghyuck didn’t bring up the training squadrons again, but he kept glancing up at Renjun like he was expecting him to. Renjun knew he had to pull up some kind of positive response. They both knew that was what he was here for. The rest of it, the talking, the wine, was a waiting game.

But in the end, even mild inebriation couldn’t make him act the friend he was supposed to be. Donghyuck could tell.

* * *

First day back in mixed class, and Renjun already wished he’d stayed home. He trudged over to Donghyuck, trying to ignore the whispers that circled him when he passed. His mother, did you hear, did you hear? His classmates gave him a wide berth.

“I’ve made you a loner by association. I guess I should be sorry,” Renjun said to Donghyuck. 

Donghyuck shrugged. “We were too cool for them anyway.” He flashed his devil-may-care grin. It wasn’t his full smile. It hadn’t been since their argument.

Renjun didn’t expect Chenle to break off from a group of other vampires and bound over to them. For a vampire, Chenle wasn’t big on physical touch, but this time he went straight for a hug. The sharp point of his chin dug painfully into Renjun’s shoulder, but Renjun had 0 complaints. 0 complaints at all.

“And here I thought you’d be too chicken,” Donghyuck said.

Chenle stuck his tongue out at Donghyuck over Renjun’s shoulder. “I would know better than anyone that family isn’t what makes us,” he said into Renjun’s ear. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

A ugly knot of tension around Renjun’s chest loosened, one he didn’t realize had been there since he walked in and saw Chenle standing with the others, apart from him. It untangled, frayed, disappeared. Renjun felt suddenly, terrifyingly overwhelmed. He clutched onto Chenle, burying his face into Chenle’s shoulder.

“Whoa there,” Chenle said, glancing over at Donghyuck helplessly. He gave Renjun an awkward pat on the back.

“I needed that,” Renjun said.

Donghyuck made a show of looking at an imaginary watch on his wrist. “It’s been a minute, and as your best friend it’s time for me to remind you that you asked me not to let you be a sentimental crybaby in public.”

“I don’t care,” Renjun said into Chenle’s shirt.

“What, he’s crying?” Chenle said, sounding horrified. “He’s going to get snot on my shirt.”

“I am not crying,” Renjun said. His voice wobbled in a totally convincing way. Very good.

“My shirt is expensive,” Chenle said, though he didn’t shove Renjun off.

“It’s a white tee,” Donghyuck said.

“Yeah, your point?”

Renjun eventually released Chenle, without leaving any snot stains, thank you very much. For the record, he wasn’t crying. Just sniffling a bit.

It was easier now to lift his head and face the rest of the room. From across the room, Jaemin gave him a tentative wave. He nudged Jeno, who glanced up, met Renjun’s eyes, and glanced away. Jaemin rolled his eyes and said something to Jeno, who said something back. Other than that, Jeno ignored him.

* * *

Jaemin had said, “It doesn’t mean he’s changed. He’s still Renjun.” And Jeno agreed with that. Really! Logically. Kind of. Okay, if he was being honest, he still felt like Renjun had pulled one over him, and it drove him a little mad.

He glanced at Renjun again when Renjun wasn’t looking. He felt like something should be different, a neon flashing label that read,  _ My mom hates your kind and I’m okay with it.  _ But Renjun just looked— _ pretty,  _ Jeno’s brain supplied. A little lonely, Jeno decided.

Here’s the other thing. Jeno’s family would expect him to cut all ties with Renjun. Jaemin’s family expected the same, but Jaemin had always been the type to obey at convenience. He’d probably already come up with some brilliant excuse like,  _ I’m trying to keep an eye on the enemy _ —and actually, could Jeno use that one too? Wait, that wasn’t the point.

Still, after Jeno caught himself glancing at Renjun again—because he was confused by all of this, and if Jaemin dared to suggest otherwise into this he’d kick him—he decided enough was enough.

Renjun raised his head before Jeno approached, like he always did these days. “I can sense you,” he’d said vaguely when asked. It had sent a hot rush through Jeno’s chest when he said that, all around his cold unbeating heart. Which had been—weird. Yeah, weird. 

But not exactly unwelcome.

“Can we meet up after class?” Jeno asked.

Renjun’s lips parted in momentary surprise, but he gave a slow nod. “Yeah, okay.”

Donghyuck gave Jeno the look, and put an arm around Renjun’s shoulder. It was Donghyuck’s pull anything and I’ll kill you look. Jeno gave him his own look back, his best blank-faced stare. He wasn’t scared of Donghyuck. Okay, he was a little scared. Not because of Donghyuck’s magic, but because Donghyuck was a dirty plotter.

After class, Renjun and Jeno went some way up the old hill.

“Feels like deja vu, doesn’t it?” Renjun said. He raised a hand to the sky, and the moonlight split into two across his cheeks.

* * *

“What did you want to talk about?” Renjun asked.

Jeno had a weird dazed look on his face. He blinked, as if remembering where he was, and his focus sharpened. “Did you know your mom hated vampires?” Jeno asked. Renjun should have expected that. Still felt like a curveball.

“No, but I knew she didn’t like them.”

Something like hope died in Jeno’s eyes, going cold and flinty. “And you were okay with that?” he asked.

“I didn’t say I was okay with it.”

“You’re still on her side though. Isn’t that the same thing?”

“She’s my mom, Jeno! What do you expect?”

“She hates vampires,” Jeno said, voice thick with derision. “I expect you to care about that.”

“She didn’t do anything.”

“So it’s fine until she does something?”

Anger pooled thick and hot in Renjun’s gut, and suddenly he was stalking over to Jeno and fisting a hand in his shirt. “You’re one to talk. You didn’t seem to think much of humans last I checked. Your human drivers, you don’t even look at them. Ever think about that?”

Bingo. Jeno froze, his features locking up. Not for long, just for a passing second, but it was enough.

“That’s—it’s not the same. I don’t hate them.” 

Renjun released him and turned away. He put several steps of space between them though he didn’t need to. Jeno already felt faraway. “Is it really different?” he said to the air. He didn’t care if Jeno heard or not.

He could walk away now—and every rational part of his body was telling him he should—could walk away and leave this mess behind him. It was never going to work. They couldn’t be friends, they couldn’t be anything.

This was what really mattered, wasn’t it? Jeno was a vampire and he was half-human, and no matter what else changed, it’d come back to that. Renjun wanted too much he shouldn’t want, and was scared of too much he was tired of being scared of. He’d fooled himself into believing this whole relationship hadn’t been teetering on the edge of a knife, but here it was, the tipping point, the part where the dominoes fell. Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it? The stillness before someone pushed over the first piece. Maybe only Renjun hadn’t known that before.

Still Renjun stopped there, three steps from Jeno, his feet rooted in place by—what? Stupidity? Hope. In relative terms, they were the same. He was hopeful stupid and stupid hopeful, and it was all pointless.

Jeno caught up to him and caught his hand. Renjun thought the touch was tender. He was losing it.

But he was hopeful stupid and he turned, catching the movement of Jeno’s neck as he swallowed. “No,” Jeno said, his hand tightening on Renjun’s arm. “You’re right. It’s…not so different.”

Silence stretched out between them like a spell. If someone had told Renjun they were the only two people in the world right now, he would have believed them. He was so full of hopeful stupid he thought he might burst. Jeno’s fingers still rested against his, and if he focused on the stars behind Jeno’s head he could pretend he didn’t notice it.

“It’s not really about your mom,” Jeno said. “I was kind of, scared? That you felt the same as her.” 

“Right, that’s why I let you snack on me all the time,” Renjun said. Jeno snorted, and the spell broke.

But there must still have been magic in the air, because his hand stayed in Jeno’s, and neither of them moved away. The wind swayed the grass around them, and blew Jeno’s bangs into his eyes. Renjun didn’t notice he’d moved until his fingers touched Jeno’s hair, brushing the stray hairs aside. Jeno didn’t stop him. “You know, I didn’t drink from any other witches while you were gone,” Jeno said.

What? What was that supposed to mean? Jeno said it all casual. “Okay, cool,” Renjun managed.

Jeno might have frowned. Renjun wasn’t sure. He was too busy studying the constellations past Jeno’s head, which didn’t burn nearly as bright. He couldn’t remember any of their names. 

“Is this your way of propositioning me to give you blood?”

Jeno snorted, then laughed. “Maybe.” Then Jeno blocked the stars, his head coming paralyzingly close. He moved so fast, with his stupid vampire speed. Renjun could never keep up. He was going to get whiplash. 

“Can I?”

Renjun rolled his eyes. “Sure, whatever. You don’t have to ask, after all this time.” He turned his head to the side, exposing the side of his neck. He was dimly aware of Jen’s thumb rubbing a circle on the back of his hand.

Jeno’s touch disappeared from the back of his hand. Renjun immediately missed it, then kicked himself for missing it. Then he felt it reappear against the side of his face, curving under his jawbone and touching the side of his neck, turning his head back to the center and tilting it up.

Jeno leaned in. Renjun watched the mole at the side of his cheekbone, under his eye, because Jeno’s admission that he hadn’t drunk from other witches unsettled him too much to look Jeno in the eye. It was almost like he’d been waiting for Renjun—which couldn’t be right—no way—

This was crossing the line from hopeful stupid into plain stupid.

Renjun was still watching that mole when Jeno’s lips pressed against his.

His lips were cool and soft, but Renjun could feel the heat of his mouth behind them. He couldn’t hear himself think past the distinct cacophony that started up somewhere in the back of his head. No way— No way. He wasn’t sure he could think, when Jeno’s lips began to move against his.

He was sure somewhere inside him that self-preservation instinct was screaming at him to push Jeno away. Instead, he wrapped his arms around Jeno and pulled him closer. 

Jeno licked into his mouth, and Renjun went hot all over. He was losing it. The dominoes were tumbling down, not tipping over one by one but collapsing in every direction, pieces flying, spinning out of his control. 

Renjun’s tongue caught on the edge of one of Jeno’s fangs, and with a prick of pain his mouth—their mouths—flooded with the taste of iron. The pain brought him back to himself. He almost lost it again when Jeno sucked on the tip of his tongue, chasing the taste of blood, but that  _ what the hell am I doing  _ shot through him cold _. _

Renjun drew back. His breath fanned out between their faces, louder than the pounding of his pulse.

Renjun’s tongue felt clumsy, slow, when he found his voice again. “This isn’t part of what we do,” he said dumbly. Renjun knew that Jeno sometimes did this with the witches he fed on, or more, that vampires in general did. He wasn’t sure why remembering that felt a lot like getting dunked in ice water.

“You didn’t like it?” Jeno asked. Renjun flushed, and bristled when Jeno’s lips curved up in a lazy smile. He knew the answer to that, the bastard.

“What—no. That’s not the point,” Renjun said, glaring at him. To his irritation, his glare didn’t have much of an effect. Jeno kept smiling. “I don’t know if you’re trying to make my blood taste better or what, but…”

“Nah, your blood already tastes good.”

“Then…then why…?”

Jeno shrugged, still all casual. It was a little pathetic that Renjun was the only one dying on the inside. From a kiss, no less. “I guess I just wanted to kiss you,” Jeno said. What—for fun? “You can tell me if you don’t want to.”

Right, Renjun could do that. He should. He wet his lips, opened his mouth, and said nothing. Absolutely nothing. Worse, an involuntary sound made its way out of his throat, close to a whine. Jeno was still smiling, a mischievous turn in the side of his mouth. Then Jeno leaned down again, and all Renjun could think was—

_ Okay _ . This was okay.

* * *

Donghyuck came home with a training squadron uniform of his own sooner than Renjun had expected. Much sooner than he’d hoped.

“Not a word,” Donghyuck said. “Unless it’s a nice one.”

“You look good, Hyuck,” Renjun managed with a weak smile, because it was true. He did. Magical and dangerous and glowing with pride. For that, Donghyuck shot him a real smile. For a second, it made him feel better.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's come to my attention that we're passing 200k words now. feels a little crazy, like how is that possible? it feels like it shouldn't be possible really, haha  
> thanks for hanging in there all the way up to now


	32. there's more to lose

With Donghyuck’s new routine, he was often out of the apartment. Training squadron training was every evening except Sunday, and as soon as mixed class was over, Donghyuck, Jeno, Jaemin, and some others packed their bags and headed toward whatever special location they had for training. It was an open secret. No one said aloud where they were going, but everyone knew.

This meant that Renjun spent more time with Chenle and sometimes Jisung. Something might have happened while Renjun was away, because while they bickered as much as usual, it’d lost some of its edge, more squabbling than real fighting. To Renjun’s dismay, all they decided to do with their improved cooperation was gang up on him.

“Loser has to wash all the cups,” Chenle said to the ceiling while they were sprawled out on Renjun’s floor.

They had tried to practice...something. Renjun couldn’t really recall and he doubted it was important. He fanned his face. What was important was the sweat running down his forehead and his clothes sticking to his skin. The late summer heat had come in with a vengeance, and even at—he glanced at the clock—9 pm, the heat was oppressive. He might be melting. It was too hot to think, to hot to even be amused at the two vampires currently dying on his apartment floor. While they couldn’t feel cold, it seemed like they could really, really feel heat, even worse than Renjun did.

“Why do you think we don’t all just move to tropical islands?” Chenle had said, unimpressed when Renjun brought it up, back before he’d joined them in dying from the heat. Renjun remembered this time fondly.

“Because you want to keep up the goth aesthetic?” And now Renjun had a vision of vampires parading through his head in tropical shirts. One of them was in a horrid yellow one with dancing pineapples, an insult to all that was good and true in the world, and when he turned around, it was Jeno in sunglasses. Jeno lowered his sunglasses with one hand, looked over the rim, said, “I just wanted to kiss you.” And— 

And yeah, the heat was getting to him too.

“We do not have a goth aesthetic,” Jisung had said, like he was personally offended. He was wearing all black on the hottest day of summer.

Now here they were an hour later, Renjun still sweating through his shirt, and Chenle was talking about washing cups.

“I’m not playing and I’m washing your cups. They had blood in them,” Renjun said. Cold water and two chilled premium blood packs hadn’t helped much. Donghyuck might kill Renjun if he knew what his precious wine glasses had been used for, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t kill him. Renjun might have done it on purpose. He might be hoping Donghyuck was out suffering training in the heat, and regretting his life choices, and maybe having a heat-addled realization that his life’s dream wasn’t worth it after all.

“Aw, Renjun’s scared of blood. That’s kind of cute,” Jisung said.

“I’m not scared,” Renjun said, reaching out a hand to jab Jisung in the ribs. But alas, Jisung was too far away and not worth moving for.

“You keep telling yourself that,” Chenle said. Jisung high-fived him.

Chenle did get a jab in the ribs. He yelped and squirmed away, saying, “Violence in this weather? Uncool.”

Renjun gave in because he was  _ not  _ scared, but he should have known better. When they all held their hands up to the ceiling, they both held up fists while he alone held up two fingers. Renjun decided he hated rock-paper-scissors. Renjun was sure they’d conspired to bring this about somehow, though he had no proof. Sometimes they were like this, so in tune that it was like they could read each other’s minds. It was almost creepy.

Renjun peeled himself up from the ground and took their glasses to the kitchen sink, while they snickered behind him.

* * *

The bright side of Donghyuck being in the training squadrons was—you know, with losing almost all the time Renjun had with his best friend, and having to say, “Ha ha, that’s cool” every time Donghyuck talked about some new fighting maneuver he learned, you know, when he was home to talk about them, and Donghyuck knowing Renjun didn’t really mean it, and Donghyuck knowing that Renjun knew he knew making it awkward between them.

Renjun had to come up with a new catch phrase besides ha ha, that’s cool.

And Donghyuck coming back with a bruise the size of a tennis ball on his shoulder, acting all happy about it, saying, “We sparred with some of the real members today!”

(“Ha ha, that’s cool.”)

And Donghyuck saying, “We’re going to start shadowing them on patrols.”

(“Ha ha, that’s… That’s cool.”)

Not to mention that Donghyuck wasn’t getting enough sleep so when he was around, he was prickly. Renjun couldn’t even try to bring up that he was throwing himself into danger.

Okay, Renjun wasn’t getting off track.

The bright side of Donghyuck being in the training squadrons was that Renjun got used to Donghyuck coming back mostly in one piece. On good days, he could believe that the dream had been just that. A dream.

* * *

Renjun was allowed one monitored phone call a week with his mother. He had to use Professor Seo’s phone, and Professor Seo reminded him apologetically each time that it would be recorded.

His mother seemed to be doing alright for herself, for being under constant surveillance. She’d somehow wrangled to have the vampires take care of the cafe for her, so some poor vampires were out during the day flipping pancakes and telling confused part-timers why their boss was out for the month and being replaced by unreasonably good looking people they’d never seen before.

As far as Renjun could tell, she spent her days tending the garden and continuing whatever research she’d been doing on demons. She only told him the latter part because he asked, and not without obvious frustration, enough that he knew she didn’t want to be asked about it and that she hadn’t found anything useful.

She was more concerned about him than herself, in her usual way. She didn’t ask if he was eating enough or if he was doing well in school. She made sure he wasn’t wandering around campus on his own and asked if he was keeping to the curfew she’d set at home—which wasn’t possible with mixed class. He said yes anyway.

She didn’t ask if he was staying away from vampires, but she did ask if he was staying away from anyone dangerous, and he knew what that meant.

* * *

Jeno lined up in front of Donghyuck, who grinned with all his teeth.

“Ready to get your ass whooped?” Donghyuck said.

Jeno grinned too, letting the edge of one fang protrude. “Speak for yourself.”

He leapt at Donghyuck. He would’ve slammed face first into the barrier Donghyuck threw up—it’d happened once before and that had been mortifying—but he was expecting it this time. He saw the slight shimmer in the air and changed course at the last second, close enough to give the illusion that he was going to crash into the barrier. He jumped up over where he thought the top of the barrier was, and knew his guess was good when he hit nothing. He knew Donghyuck would have surrounded himself on all sides, including the top, because he wasn’t sloppy, but Donghyuck’s strength was offense, not defense. The top of his barriers was always the weakest part.

Jeno slammed down with his fist, hit a hard surface he couldn’t see. The air shimmered where he made contact. He felt the surface crack beneath his knuckles, and saw Donghyuck’s widening eyes below as he finally tracked where Jeno had landed.

Jeno broke through, aiming to scratch the side of Donghyuck’s cheek. They always played until first blood. Going for the head wasn’t nice, but Donghyuck had been going on about how no one can resist  _ this face  _ earlier, and Jeno could claim it was an accident. Donghyuck wouldn’t believe him, but you couldn’t have everything.

But, like Jeno had said earlier, Donghyuck’s strength was offense.

Any remnant of the barrier vanished in the blink of an eye, and Jeno felt the distant brief sensation of Donghyuck regathering his magic before it exploded upward toward Jeno in glass-like shards. Jeno wasn’t sure if they were glass or ice or something else, but he wasn’t keen to find out. Each of the shards was the length of his arm and wicked sharp.

Jeno forced his body to dissolve to smoke. It wasn’t a trick he used often, because of the long cooldown period and because it was the most uncomfortable of his transformations, but he did want to win. He concentrated through the familiar feeling of each of his molecules being peeled apart, and made it just before the first shard would have pierced his leg.

The shard passed through him, searing cold and sharp edges that didn’t cut but still stung. Ice then. It almost broke Jeno’s concentration. He redoubled his focus to avoid the other ones, and swirled down toward Donghyuck. He couldn’t maintain this form for long, but he’d make the most of it.

Donghyuck wouldn’t be able to know where Jeno would materialize, but he must have guessed as much because he began to form rows and rows of ice needles around himself in every direction. If Jeno tried to materialize near Donghyuck, he’d get cut first.

Since Jeno wouldn’t be able to materialize near Donghyuck, and he was running out of time, he picked a spot a safe distance in front of Donghyuck to materialize instead. As he materialized, he picked up the jagged pebble he’d been eyeing from the air and flung it at Donghyuck, masking his movement with the smoke of his still reforming body. At the same time, Donghyuck’s ice needles came flying toward Jeno.

Donghyuck was too busy watching Jeno, so he didn’t see the miniscule pebble hurtling his way. The pebble cut a gash across his cheek just before the first ice needle grazed Jeno’s arm.

All the ice needles vanished.

“Damn, you got me. I should have shielded at the same time,” Donghyuck said, though Jeno wasn’t sure even Donghyuck was capable of shielding while manipulating hundreds of tiny ice needles. “Well, the record’s still 11 to 9.”

“10 to 9,” Jeno said. “Last time doesn’t count.”

“How does it not count?”

“You faked an injury. I thought we were done.”

“Sounds like it’s your problem you got fooled, not mine. Still my win.”

“10 to 9,” Jeno said.

“11 to 9.”

“Hey, hey,” Jaemin said. “The squad leader’s calling for us. Free time’s over.” He gave them both an once-over. “Remind me why you two still fight each other when we’re supposed to be working on fighting together?”

“To remind Jeno I’m still better than him.”

Jeno shoved Donghyuck, probably harder than strictly necessary. Why did he do it? For him, the reason was simple. When he won with Donghyuck it felt like what was meant to happen. When he won against Donghyuck, he felt like he’d won. 

And he needed to set the record straight.

Jeno wondered if Jaemin had any ulterior motive in asking. It was no secret that all 5 of the vampires’ top pick for a pair bond was Donghyuck, even though the squad leaders said that it’d be a while before they’d attempt to form any pairs.

From what Jeno knew, the pair bond was close to a mind link, though it didn’t allow for mind to mind communication the way the mind link did. It was better that way, because it couldn’t be turned off the way the mind link could, not until one of the pair turned 25 and the bond automatically broke. It wasn’t clear why the magic worked this way, but decades of research to extend it had yielded no success, and when one pair had come out of the research half-mad and babbling, it had been shut down.

Still, even knowing it was temporary didn’t make it easier to let someone else in that way. Jeno wasn’t sure if he was ready for the baring of self, always being aware of someone else, always sensing their emotions, being able to draw on their energy and unable to refuse them yours.

It wasn’t like he had a choice, even if he wasn’t ready. He just knew that out of the five witches training with them, he couldn’t imagine it with anyone but Donghyuck.

Donghyuck clapped Jeno on the shoulder. “Good to see you back in good shape though. You’ve been distracted. Is it because of your injury over break?”

Jeno nodded, though he wasn’t sure it was true. The silver bullet had rattled him, but not much more than it’d rattled the whole vampire community. More so now that they’d traced the humans’ pedigrees and found no connections with vampires, positive or negative, and no connections to hunters, though the last hunters had died off centuries ago. The closest connection to a hunter was Renjun’s dad, who had some hunter ancestor far back in the family tree, but Renjun’s mother hadn’t been lying when she swore he had no idea of his ancestry.

Jeno might have been distracted by other reasons, like the taste of someone on his tongue. And his growing suspicion that Renjun was avoiding him, though if he was Jeno had no idea why. Jeno hadn’t been able to find out before he’d been swept up in daily training, and with how much their schedules overlapped now, he might as well have been avoiding Renjun himself.

Jeno was aware of how much shit he would get into if it got out that he’d kissed a half-human, let alone the son of someone the vampire community currently despised. There was a part of him that cared about that, but a bigger part knew the consequences and would still do it all over again.

* * *

It was Saturday afternoon and Donghyuck patted the space beside him on the couch. “I’ve missed you,” Donghyuck said.

Renjun bit back a sharp retort that Donghyuck had chosen to miss him. Getting these fragmented slices of Donghyuck’s time made Renjun feel like he had to spill out all his life updates at once because he didn’t know when the next time would be.

Maybe he was a little bitter even as he curled up into Donghyuck’s side, because he said, “You know how Jeno gets blood from me?”

“Yeah, and I’m not sure if I approve anymore after he left that obvious bite mark over break.”

Renjun chose to ignore the underlying jab there, which was that Renjun had let him leave the bite mark. “Last time...he kissed me.”

Donghyuck choked on his drink, and Sicheng went rigid under Renjun’s palm. “What? When?”

“End of last week.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“You haven’t exactly been around to tell.”

Donghyuck narrowed his eyes. “Don’t give me that. You had enough time to tell me.”

“Whatever. It’s not a big deal.”

Donghyuck didn’t even bother to pretend to consider what Renjun said. “You don’t believe that.” Sometimes Renjun hated how well Donghyuck knew him.

“It was just for fun,” Renjun insisted.

“Right. I’ve known you for three years to find out now that kissing your friends is totally your idea of fun.”

“You don’t know everything about me.”

Donghyuck leaned close, puckering his lips. “Okay then, where’s mine?”

Renjun shoved him. “Gross.”

“Gross?” Donghyuck put a hand over his heart and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “You know how many people would kill for this? You need to get your eyes checked.”

“My eyes work fine.”

“I can’t believe I was about to give you a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Donghyuck muttered, shaking his head. Then he leaned over again, his face absolutely serious. It made Renjun a little nervous. “So, was it fun? Is Jeno a good kisser? Did he use tongue?”

“Donghyuck!” Renjun jabbed him in the ribs and he made an oof sound. Sicheng meowed in disapproval, and Renjun full-heartedly agreed.

“Hey—didn’t you ever learn that violence is bad—this is vital information! The people need to know.”

“Who are the people even.” So Renjun could find and rid the world of them all, starting with Donghyuck.

Donghyuck started counting off on his fingers. “Me, me, Jaemin, Jeno—what? The dude needs to know. What if his technique sucks and no one ever told him?”

Renjun reached for Donghyuck, and Donghyuck scrambled away from him on the couch.

* * *

Absorbing energy from supernaturals was different from absorbing it from humans. It took more effort to get a hold on their energy, but once he did, it was harder to take only what he needed and not as much as he wanted. He didn’t need as much though, so he was grateful for that. At the start, a drop of energy from a couple supernaturals could last him a day, even if they weren’t strong.

Renjun didn’t touch his friends. He had thought about asking Donghyuck if he could take some energy now and then, but then he’d have to explain why he needed it and how he did it and probably reveal Sicheng, which was a whole other can of worms. The whole idea of it made him a little queasy. He would tell Donghyuck about Sicheng eventually, but maybe not when Donghyuck was all gungho about becoming a mini demon-slayer.

Donghyuck relayed with gusto stories of how demons had been defeated in the past. “All demons have a weak spot. It’s not like vampires where you have to get them through the heart to make sure of a kill. A demon’s weak spot can be anywhere, but if you get them there, they’re an instant goner.”

“How do you figure out where the weak spot is?”

Donghyuck shrugged. “That’s the hard part. They say for some demons it shows up as a discoloration on their skin. Other than that, jab them until it works, I suppose? But let me tell you this story about how a demon was tricked into giving away his weak spot…”

They hadn’t been able to find the weak spots for many of the demons in the war, Donghyuck told him, which was why they’d had to seal them away.

“You ever think that maybe they aren’t all bad?” Renjun asked.

Donghyuck looked at him funny. “Demons are evil, Renjun. They can’t not be bad. You do know that, right?”

Renjun had apologized to Sicheng later, not about Donghyuck calling him evil because he didn’t think Sicheng cared, but about making him sit through stories of killing demons.

Sicheng had shrugged it off with the same nonchalance as Donghyuck. “Demons don’t care much about other demons outside of their family,” he said.

Renjun stared at Sicheng.

“Close your mouth, Renjun. You’re going to catch flies like that.”

“You have a family?” For some reason, Renjun had never imagined Sicheng with others of his kind. He wondered if Sicheng’s family looked like him, yellow cat-eyed and sharp jawed. He wondered if all demons had yellow cat eyes.

“Yes,” Sicheng said, a wistful note sneaking into his voice. “Two brothers, an older and a younger.”

As it was, Renjun still hadn’t told Donghyuck about Sicheng or his magic, but he would! Soon. Eventually. He was just waiting for the right opportunity to present itself.

Renjun wanted to talk to Donghyuck about his magic, about Sicheng, about everything he didn’t understand. Maybe Donghyuck would know why Renjun’s magic seemed to need more and more energy over time, a couple people becoming three becoming five. Renjun couldn’t be sure, but sometimes he thought the dark lines in his magic were expanding.

* * *

Creation magic class hadn’t started up again, but the hut was open and from what Renjun heard from Professor Koon, all the upperclassmen had resumed their work. Everything they made now went through inspection from a committee of vampires and witches, but that didn’t discourage them. They churned out work at a frenzied pace, and some of them had started to bring sleeping bags to the hut.

Renjun hadn’t been back, and Professor Koon didn’t pressure him, though she did say she missed seeing him around during their mandatory once a week meetings.

Renjun couldn’t drum up the motivation to go back to the hut without YangYang, who still hadn’t managed to escape the clutches of his parents though he’d managed to get his hands back on his phone. In his last message, he said he’d hatched some escape plan, punctuated with too many exclamation marks. Now that Renjun thought about it, he should probably check up on that.

* * *

Jeno finally caught Renjun after mixed class. He was going to be late to training, but he left that problem for future Jeno.

“Are you avoiding me?” he blurted out.

“Why would I be avoiding you?” Renjun said to the ground.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking. Is it because of the kiss?”

Renjun twitched at the word kiss. “No—I don’t know.”

“I told you, if you didn’t like it, it’s fine.” Though Jeno would be very disappointed, and would probably wallow in self-pity for a while. “We don’t have to. I’d rather you not avoid me.”

Renjun turned his head up, startling a bit when he realized how close they’d gotten. Jeno’s eyes drifted involuntarily down to his mouth, and Renjun must have noticed because he twitched again, though he didn’t draw away. Instead he searched Jeno’s face—for what Jeno didn’t know. Jeno didn’t know if he found it. 

It would be easy to kiss him again like this. Jeno almost wanted to see how he’d react if he tried. He also just wanted to. Just because.

“I liked it,” Renjun said after some time, grimacing like the words were painful. “I liked it...a lot.”

Then Renjun lifted his chin, a determined glint in his eye, and moved up until his lips pressed against Jeno’s. Jeno caught and held him there. Each time Renjun kissed him, it was like he was desperate, like it was the last time.

It was short, but when Renjun drew back, his lips shiny, Jeno didn’t try to stop him. Jeno couldn’t read him.

“I still like it,” Renjun said. “I just wish I didn’t.”

“Why? What’s wrong with liking something?” Jeno asked.

Renjun drew away, and when he spoke it was more to himself than Jeno. “There’s more to lose.”

* * *

The clock had just ticked past midnight when Renjun got a message from Donghyuck.  _ Be out late. Don’t wait up. _

So Donghyuck had noticed that Renjun stayed up each night until he returned, under the pretense of homework. Renjun sighed, cleaned up the papers for assignments he didn’t have, and shuffled into his room to sleep.

When he woke the next morning, Donghyuck still hadn’t returned. It shouldn’t have been a cause for concern—Donghyuck had early morning classes most days. But his classes weren’t that early, he didn’t respond to any of the messages Renjun sent, and Renjun couldn’t shake off the bad feeling he’d had since Donghyuck started joining the trainings. Call it paranoia. In that way maybe he was similar to his mother. 

Before he knew it he was pacing in front of the gates of Asomateus, shooting messages to Jeno and Jaemin.

A human, obviously a pet, stood in front of the gates. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said, again, as if Renjun hadn’t heard him the first time.

“I’m waiting for someone,” Renjun said, and he couldn’t stop himself from baring his teeth at the boy. A bad habit he’d started to develop lately, half-impulse and half spending too much time around vampires.

“Okay, calm down,” the human said, but he glanced around like he was hoping he could call for security to come whisk Renjun away. Too bad he was the security.

And if Jeno or Jaemin didn’t come down right now, Renjun would stick his magic in, take enough of this boy’s energy to get him on his knees, and push through the gates himself.

Another impulse he’d had lately. Probably couldn’t blame the vamps for that one. He hadn’t acted on this kind of impulse so far, but the boy looked about to open his mouth again and if he said, “You’re not supposed to be here” one more time…

Before the boy could speak, a familiar head of fluffy brown hair appeared behind the gates. Jaemin came out, rubbing his eyes. He wore a mishmash ensemble that he, horribly, was pulling off, with a pair of flip flops, a silky blouse, and khaki shorts.

“Junnie, it’s late,” he said. “Or early for you, I suppose.”

“Do you know where Donghyuck is?”

Jaemin’s mouth snapped closed from halfway into a yawn. “I thought he and Jeno had gone back to your place,” Jaemin said, suddenly much more awake. “Wait, let me change.”

A couple minutes later Jaemin emerged in sneakers and clothes he could move in, and they took the bus over to campus. From there, Jaemin led Renjun to a set of large gymnasium-like buildings behind the arena where Renjun had witnessed vampire evaluations.

A girl walked back and forth across the path up to the buildings. A witch from their class, Renjun realized. She waved when she saw Jaemin, but her hand lowered when she saw Renjun with him.

“You aren’t supposed to bring outsiders in,” she hissed at Jaemin. She had dark circles under her eyes, and Renjun wouldn’t have been surprised if she said she hadn’t slept all night. She ignored Renjun’s presence completely, aside from a quick glance and a lightning-fast curl of the lip. The ignoring wasn’t unusual, but the disdain was new. Not unexpected after what’d happened over break, but hard to get used to. She wouldn’t say anything in front of Jaemin, but Renjun knew she itched to.

Jaemin smiled at her pleasantly, like she hadn’t spoken. “Have you seen Jeno and Donghyuck? Weren’t they part of your patrol group last night?” She cut her eyes at Renjun like  _ Seriously? In front of him?  _ Jaemin ignored that too.

She pulled Jaemin aside and spoke into his ear. Renjun pretended to be interested in a rock on the ground, but she wasn’t much good at whispering and he heard it all. “We were in the middle of the patrol last night when we were attacked. Everyone scattered and most of the group isn’t back yet. Everyone who returned has no injuries though.”

“Attacked? And they didn’t call us?”

“They decided not to call us newbies, since we don’t even have pairs yet. That’s why—” a flash of frustration ran over her face “—they left me here. The rest of the training squadrons are out scouring the area. No one was injured in the initial attack, as far as I could tell, but there was a lot of smoke and chaos, and it was a mess because we had some preparation for demons or rogues, but not humans… How were we supposed to know that was a trap?”

“Humans, here? I thought the magic deterred them?”

“It’s supposed to! We ran into one who was injured, and everyone was busy trying to figure out where he’d come from and how to help him when the first smoke bomb went off. Not that we knew it was a smoke bomb at first, or that humans were attacking us, and when we did, no one couldn’t decide if we should attack back or not because you’re not supposed to hurt humans, which is a stupid rule if you ask me but everyone here has to be a saint and it’s like can you forget about your moral higher ground when we’re being attacked? But no, and now we don’t even know where everyone is or if they’re even okay.” She kicked at the ground.

“Thanks for telling me this. That must have been hard,” Jaemin said, with absolute sincerity. The witch blushed, and Renjun fought not to roll his eyes. 

“Okay, let’s go,” Jaemin said, turning and walking back down the path. Renjun jogged to catch up with him, Sicheng following behind them both.

“Wait, that’s it?”

“Course not. I remember the patrol path they took yesterday. We can check it out.”

“You think we’re going to find them when the training squadrons haven’t?”

“We don’t know that the training squadrons haven’t found them. And no, not necessarily, but I’d rather be out looking for them than sitting around doing nothing. Wouldn’t you?”

Renjun nodded, though that’d never been a question.

They went back to the edge of campus, took another bus, and headed into the trees. In the pale light of morning, Renjun could see how tired Jaemin was, and even without seeing would have known when Jaemin almost tripped over a tree root and cursed quietly. Jaemin was rarely that clumsy. Sicheng took the middle position between Jaemin and Renjun as they moved through the trees, picking out a path for Renjun so that he didn’t stumble. Renjun murmured a soft, “Thanks.” Sicheng purred.

They tried not to make much noise. Renjun kept his senses out for humans, but didn’t detect any. Either they were far from the attack, or the humans had gone.

Three times they almost ran into training squadron members, but Renjun felt them at the edge of his awareness and hissed at Jaemin to stop. They’d duck behind the trees and wait for the members to pass.

The first time, Jaemin mouthed why, but moved anyway. That time had been close, Johnny’s head passing by a few meters away from them, with a vampire companion Renjun didn’t recognize. Renjun had been afraid for a moment that the vampire would notice his beating heart, until he felt Jaemin’s aura surround them, shielding their presences.

“How’d you know they were coming?” Jaemin asked after.

“I felt the vampire’s aura.” A half-lie.

Jaemin whistled softly, looking impressed. “You noticed an aura when I didn’t? Man, that makes me feel bad.”

They moved further off the direct path of the patrol after that. The further they walked, the more dense the trees became, until the shadows of the trees made it hard to tell what time of day it was. They’d come no closer to finding Jeno or Donghyuck.

Renjun was about to ask Jaemin if they could take a break when Sicheng stumbled in front of him and sank to his forepaws. Renjun rushed over. He’d never seen Sicheng trip. “What’s the matter?” he asked, forgetting for a moment that Jaemin was watching and Sicheng couldn’t respond.

Sicheng shook himself, trying to lift himself up onto his feet again. Renjun drew his awareness back into himself and sent it questing toward Sicheng. He was shocked to find Sicheng’s energy lower than usual, at least half-depleted.

A ping of disturbance registered at the back of Renjun’s mind, but he was too focused on Sicheng to pay much attention to it, until it grew, foreign energy encroaching on his awareness and coming in fast. Renjun whirled around, shouting Jaemin’s name.

He was too slow. Pain racketed through the back of Renjun’s skull. He saw stars, and through them the world turning, Jaemin turning as people emerged from between the trees. Smoke, maybe. Someone’s hands were on him, and then it faded to black.

* * *

Renjun thought he was still dreaming. Someone said his name and he heard water hitting the ground in a slow drip, drip, drip. Renjun? Drip. Renjun. Drip. He wanted to tell them to go away. The back of his head throbbed. He tried to reach a hand to feel it out, but he couldn’t move his arms. Or his legs, he soon realized.

Not being able to move finally got him to crack open one eye. It was dark. He was in some kind of underground cavern, ropes tying together his wrists and ankles.

The blob in front of him slowly resolved into Donghyuck.

“Good, he’s awake,” Donghyuck said over his shoulder. Renjun didn’t need his vision to clear to recognize that it was Jeno. He knew that energy. He’d tasted it before, and now he wanted it, he craved it, that familiar, dark  _ sweet _ — 

He turned his head until the throbbing intensified, pushing away his other thoughts. He saw Jaemin sitting up on the ground next to him, and was relieved but also annoyed to see him no worse for the wear. 

“How’d they get you?”

“Oh, I let them take me,” Jaemin said easily. Renjun squinted at him, not sure if he heard right. “Well I couldn’t leave you, and I couldn’t cover you and fight at the same time.”

“What kind of reason is that?” The dull ache in the back of his head was receding, but a new headache was coming on. “Now they’ve got two of us instead of one.”

“I’m fine, aren’t I? And we’ve found Donghyuck and Jeno, so.”

“S—my familiar?”

Jaemin’s face fell, and Renjun’s heart dropped with it. “I don’t know,” Jaemin said. “I lost him in the smoke.”

Lost. Renjun could hope that Sicheng had made it out on his own. He was capable, he didn’t owe it to Renjun to stay, and leaving was the smart move. But Renjun remembered how he’d stumbled, how weak he’d felt. 

“I’m sorry,” Jaemin said.

“It’s…” He couldn’t make himself say it was okay. “It’s not your fault.”

“Can you cut the cords?” Donghyuck asked, interrupting his thoughts.

“I don’t think so,” Renjun said. Which was a dramatic understatement, but none of them needed to know that. He was running on empty, his magic all out of juice. He didn’t understand why. He’d been at near full capacity before they left but now it was like he’d been sucked dry.

Donghyuck’s magic whipped out and cut the cords holding together Renjun’s wrists and ankles, then he went over to do the same for Jaemin. Renjun almost flinched. Just the touch of Donghyuck’s magic set off that wanting again.

Being around his friends like this was bad. Their energies were too strong. It was like placing a feast in front of a starving man and telling him he couldn’t have any, except that Renjun knew he could have some if he wanted to, and Renjun knew exactly how to have some, and he knew he didn’t have to stop at some. He could have it all— 

“Why are you here?” Donghyuck asked, helping Renjun to his feet. Renjun wanted to tell Donghyuck not to touch him, but at the same time he didn’t want Donghyuck to stop touching him, not when he could feel Donghyuck’s energy tingling against his wrist.

“We were looking for you and they ambushed us. So they captured you too?”

“We were running for a while. There was something else besides the humans chasing us.”

“Something else? What was it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look at it, but I could feel it.” A hint of fear flitted through Donghyuck’s eyes. “It wasn’t anything good.” Renjun thought of his dreams, of Donghyuck running with another boy, with Jeno? But this couldn’t be it. In Renjun’s dreams, Donghyuck was always running the wrong way. Renjun was always afraid not of what Donghyuck was running from but where he was running to, but here he was, in one piece, perfectly fine. And the cavern wasn’t pleasant but it certainly didn’t feel like a fate worse than death.

“It stopped chasing us at some point, but we ran into the humans again. We let them take us so we could figure out what they were up to,” Donghyuck said. “You would have thought they’d know better than to just tie us up and leave us alone when I have magic, but it’s lucky for us that they didn’t.”

“Hold up. You let them take you?” Renjun said. And okay, maybe he should take some of Donghyuck’s magic because he clearly didn’t deserve it. “What the hell?”

“Hey,” Donghyuck said, looking annoyed. “No one asked you to come looking for us.”

“What else would we have done? You couldn’t have, you know, sent a note being like I’m trying to get myself killed so don’t look for me?” Renjun massaged his temples.

“I’m not going to get myself killed, though if I have to look after you, I might.”

“Of all the stupid ideas—”

“And I couldn’t contact you. They took my phone.”

“Of course they did.” And now they were stuck in an underground cavern, he was all out of magic power, and he was stuck with his three idiot friends who he might as well suck dry of energy. They obviously wanted to get themselves killed so what did it matter.

And okay, that was bad. That thought was way more tempting than it should have been.

“You okay?” Jeno asked, when Renjun swayed a little. He put a hand on Renjun’s shoulder to steady him, and that touch burned even through Renjun’s clothing. Renjun jerked away.

“Whoa, sorry, didn’t realize that was you,” he managed. He thought he’d played it off pretty well, but Jeno still looked hurt. It probably wouldn’t help if Renjun said he couldn’t deal with having Jeno so close, not right now. 

Jeno’s hand lingered in the air for a beat, before falling to his side. “Okay. Sure. You’re okay though?”

“I’m fine,” Renjun said. Because there was no socially acceptable way to say, well, actually, I kind of want to eat you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahaha wow more of you than i expected liked the kiss last week. sorry tho cuz i can't guarantee if we gonna get more of those...  
> this chapter was actually supposed to end on a different note but sometimes i have 0 control over how things turn out so here we are
> 
> sidenote - i think we are drawing close to the end of this, maybe somewhere in the next 2-4 chapters? depending on how much i can get into one chp + how successfully i can conquer writer's block haha


	33. a long forgotten memory

“Can we at least look for a way out of here now that we’re together?” Renjun said.

“We still haven’t figured out what they’re up to—” Donghyuck began.

“We haven’t been able to find them,” Jeno corrected.

“So you’ve just been wandering around here for an hour without finding anyone?” Jaemin asked.

“Not an hour. Maybe 20 minutes? This place is huge,” Donghyuck said.

Renjun clamped down on his rising irritation. Irritation might break the tenuous control he had over his magic, and that wouldn’t be good for anyone. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said, without looking at Donghyuck, because if Donghyuck shot him a shit-eating grin like this was all some big joke, he might just…

He stood several steps away from them, trying to survey their surroundings. Donghyuck and Jaemin didn’t seem to notice the distance between them, but since he’d jerked away earlier, Jeno had his eyes on him. Renjun pretended he didn’t notice.

“Even if we wanted to get out, we don’t know where an exit is,” Donghyuck said.

“But if we find one, can we get out of here?”

“And run away? We just got here.” Donghyuck had the audacity to sound offended, like he was getting pulled out early from a school trip, like he was here because he wanted to be. Oh wait, he was.

Renjun whirled around. “Yeah, run away,” he snapped. “Unlike you, I’m not eager for us to all die underground.”

Jaemin and Jeno looked back and forth between them. Jeno’s lips parted, like he was surprised. Maybe they hadn’t seen Renjun snap like this at Donghyuck before. Renjun forced himself to turn away again and try to find some measure of inner peace. Inner peace? Hah. All he had inside him was emptiness, coiling into hunger each time he focused on it. That, and the ever present desire to shake Donghyuck by the shoulders and shout in his face, “Why are you like this? Why?”

“Whoa, no need to talk about dying,” Jaemin said.

“Really? Because I think some of us need a reminder.” This wasn’t meant solely for Donghyuck, but also Jeno who’d at best gone along with this plan and at worst helped conceive it. Renjun hated that he was friends with these prodigies, who had apparently never heard of self-preservation. He should have become friends with Joowon instead.

“Renjun, we’re not going to die,” Donghyuck said, like that was a given. Renjun counted to ten in his head, told himself Donghyuck wasn’t trying to sound patronizing. “It’s not like we’re going to rush in and fight them. Just spy a little. Then we’ll get out, like you want.”

Renjun switched tactics, because he knew his control would slip if it went on like this, and because he wasn’t above being a little manipulative. “I don’t want to do this,” he said, making his voice small. He despised showing weakness like this, but desperate times called for desperate measures. His fear was real, and it echoed softly around them against the backdrop of dripping water.

Too much, maybe. He glanced back to see concern written across all three of their faces, mixed with consternation on Donghyuck’s. Renjun understood then, and almost grew angry again, that Donghyuck had never wanted to drag him into this. That he wished Renjun hadn’t come. But Renjun couldn’t be angry at that. He knew why.

But what did he think, that Renjun was going to let him go out there risking his neck and do nothing? Then again, that was what being part of the training squadrons meant, wasn’t it? Maybe only Renjun hadn’t been willing to accept that.

“Renjun,” Jeno said. He almost stepped forward, but hesitated. Good. Renjun didn’t know what he’d do if Jeno got too close.

Donghyuck cleared his throat. “Fine,” he said. “How about this? If we find an exit first, we’ll leave. If we find them, we spy then we get out.”

Renjun nodded. For now, that was good enough.

* * *

They found the source of the dripping sound: a trickle of water that ran over an edge at the corner of the cavern and fell down drop by drop into blackness below. Renjun suggested they follow the water. It had to come in from somewhere, and he hoped that somewhere was out. The others agreed because they didn’t have better ideas, and any direction seemed as good as the other.

It would be funny, Renjun thought, if they didn’t run into the humans but never found a way out either. At least they wouldn’t die from thirst.

It didn’t seem like they were too far underground though. The air smelled too fresh, and a slight breeze stirred now and then. Renjun was hopeful. Cautiously.

“Where’s your familiar?” Renjun asked Donghyuck, pushing down the ache in his chest at the mention of a familiar. Sicheng hadn’t been his familiar for real.

“When the humans took us, I sent him to go find backup,” Donghyuck said.

“So you’re not complete stupid,” Renjun marveled. Just close. That was a relief. Renjun should have trusted that Donghyuck would have a contingency plan, and if it worked out, help was on the way.

Donghyuck flicked his forehead. “You’re calling me stupid?”

“Hey, you are!”

“Renjun, are you really asking me to bring up that time when you—?”

Renjun fluttered his hands, like that’d distract from what Donghyuck was saying. “Okay, okay.”

Then Donghyuck became troubled. “Haven’t been able to contact him though. I’m not sure if he’s too far or if being underground interferes with it.”

So much for contingency.

They emerged from the tunnel into a larger cavern. Renjun’s hope swelled. Holes in the top of the cavern let in streams of light that cut through the shadows, the air carried the scent of pine, and, could it be? A brighter light at the distant end of the cavern made a blue spot against the back of Renjun’s eyelids when he blinked. 

He turned toward the others, triumphant. “Sorry, it looks like—”

Then he saw the demon sitting across the cavern in front of them.

* * *

The demon sat on an outcropping of rock right behind one of the rays of light, one leg over the other. The rock elevated him several heads above them.

“Welcome,” he said. Darkness swirled behind him, and Renjun couldn’t tell if it was coming off the demon or if the shadows of the cavern were drawn to him.

“It’s Park’s demon,” Renjun hissed, forgetting the amplification effects of the cave, and his whisper bounced off the walls around them.

The demon’s eyes seemed to flash, but he did not move. This demon’s eyes were a deeper yellow than Sicheng’s, almost gold. “I would prefer if you didn’t refer to me as Park’s demon,” the demon said. “I do have a name you know.”

Though it was casual, his voice sent a shiver down Renjun’s spine. Maybe it was because it was casual—like a friend asking what time of day it was—when Renjun could feel the power running underneath it. Power like that which he’d gotten a glimpse of from Sicheng from time to time, though Sicheng’s was better hidden, and Sicheng hadn’t been at full power for some time.

Power. And a taste.

A taste of cities built from nothing, collapsing to rubble, and others built from their ashes. Humans standing behind demons, this demon, other demons, not possessed by force but by choice. Of pacts made of desire and promises. Of vampires and witches, arrayed in rows.

Of pain, blood, so much blood. Then nothing for a long time. The nothing was the worst part.

Renjun wheeled about, but Jaemin, Jeno, and Donghyuck didn’t seem affected the way he was, their faces angled upward in defiance.

“We’re not interested in knowing your name,” Donghyuck said. He had bravado if nothing else.

Several humans stepped into the cavern out of other tunnels.

“There’s eight,” Renjun said. Donghyuck shot Renjun a confused glance, but Renjun didn’t explain how he knew. He could feel their energies, surrounded by the smudged encasings, knew it was wrong now. It was supposed to be a pact, give for take. But that took investment and work, and there wasn’t always time for that—

It was wrong that he knew this.

The last of the humans to emerge held a cat in her arms. Renjun surged forward, but a hand shot out and gripped his arm, locking him in place. He almost lashed out then. His magic jumped to the surface, so close that if he had come to his senses a second later he didn’t know what would have happened.

He went cold, then hot. He jerked his arm out of Jeno’s grasp and took a step away from him. Tried to think, tried to feel bad about Jeno’s small frown, but all he could think about was how damn empty he was. Empty, empty, empty.

The human laid Sicheng down on a rock near the other demon. Renjun tried to sense something from his too still cat body, but he was too close to the other demon and that was all Renjun could feel.

The demon lifted one clawed finger and pointed it at Donghyuck. Renjun felt Donghyuck draw up a barrier, saw Jeno and Jaemin bend their knees, shifting their weights to the balls of their feet. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in making a pact with me,” the demon said.

“In your dreams,” Donghyuck said.

The demon unfolded his legs. In less than the blink of an eye, he landed in front of them and slashed his clawed hand at Donghyuck’s barrier. The claw hit the barrier with a sharp crack, and where it hit the air blurred and swayed between them. Donghyuck winced but held up a hand, and the motion stopped, the blur folding in on itself until it was gone.

The demon’s eyes widened in momentary surprise. “You sure you wouldn’t want to form a pact with me? I can envision great things for us,” he said conversationally while slashing at the barrier again.

Donghyuck didn’t flinch at the impact this time, but the air blurred again, and a shudder ran from the tip of Donghyuck’s fingers up to his shoulder. “Not a chance,” Donghyuck gritted out. “I saw what happened to the last one.”

“I didn’t like that one very much. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“I’m sure that’s what you told him too.” Through the blur, Renjun saw a corner of the demon’s lips pull down, as if he was offended. Then Donghyuck let the barrier vanish. The demon hopped forward onto his other foot, thrown off balance, and Jeno and Jaemin jumped at him.

Jaemin clipped the demon in the side of the jaw. Jeno’s foot flew at the demon’s side, but the demon moved as fast as they did. He leapt back before the kick could connect, and landed in a crouch several paces back. He rubbed his jaw.

Leapt back again when an explosion of fire hit the spot where he’d just been crouching, painting the walls of the cavern in orange, illuminating the planes of the demon’s face, and leaving a black mark across the ground.

Balls of fire danced around Donghyuck’s hands. Jeno and Jaemin jumped forward again, landing on both sides of the demon. They lunged.

All three of them became blurs in Renjun’s vision. His magic sensed their location sooner than his eyes, as they ran, attacked, dodged, and feinted at each other.

Renjun saw Jaemin and Jeno’s many years of growing up together in how they didn’t get into each other’s way, in the way they covered each others’ blind spots without speaking. The demon moved with his own lithe grace. The three of them blurred around each other, shadows dancing against the firelight of Donghyuck’s magic. It was strange that even with the demon trying to kill them, Renjun could call it beautiful.

Until the demon’s claws came too close to Jaemin’s neck and almost drew blood. Until Jeno threw the demon back and he crashed into the wall, causing a chunk of stone to break off from the ceiling and fall, crashing to the ground near Sicheng’s head.

Renjun saw too little, whether he tried to focus on one spot or take it all in. He’d see a blur turn into a twisting body into a fluid ascension into the air, feet peeling off the ground heel to ball to toe. Blur. Someone would fly, someone would land, hands and claws barely distinguishable, punctuated by occasional dissolution into bats or smoke or a cat close in coloring to Sicheng. The cat caused the demon to pause for a half-fraction of a second. Maybe all demons had a soft spot for cats.

All of it was broken up by balls of fire lighting up the cavern, each getting closer and closer to catching the demon off guard. Renjun didn’t know how Donghyuck kept up. He suspected Donghyuck was throwing in some barrier magic too, because every now and then the demon’s claws would glance off something mid-strike and jitter to the side.

“Get out of the way,” Donghyuck said to Renjun without taking his eyes off the fight. “Find a rock to hide behind or something.”

Renjun knew Donghyuck hadn’t said it to hurt, and funnily enough, that made it hurt more. Renjun got it. Donghyuck couldn’t fight and protect him. There was no clearer way to label him a liability.

“You all have such good teamwork,” Renjun heard the demon marvel. The demon was out of breath, and there was a cut down his chest, another smaller one on his shoulder. Jeno and Jaemin had taken some damage too, but not as much as the demon. The demon still sounded conversational. Maybe he always sounded that way. Renjun wanted to believe they were wearing him down, but he couldn’t help feeling like something was wrong.

Movement at the periphery of Renjun’s vision caught his eye, and he saw the humans mobilizing toward Donghyuck.

“Donghyuck,” Renjun said.

“Already got it,” Donghyuck said. He directed his next fireballs at the humans’ feet, forcing them to step back, and Renjun had to duck when one of the fireballs came too close to the top of his head. “I told you to get out of the way.”

Renjun choked down a protest and forced himself to head toward the side of the cavern, where there were some boulders clustered together. Donghyuck was right. He couldn’t do anything, so he should at least stay out of the way. That was all he could do, even after years of magical instruction. Hilarious.

He neared the cluster of boulders, where he’d told himself he’d stick it out for the rest of the battle. Where he was supposed to stay, hiding while his friends risked injury, even death, before his eyes. Doing nothing.

He reached the boulders, stopped and looked around. Then he kept going, darting past them. No one reacted to his movement, not the humans, the demon, or his friends, as if they knew how little he could do. His run slowed to a walk. He walked, unseen as light bloomed in flashes around him.

He reached the rock where Sicheng lay without a single head turning his way, no cry of alarm, even though at least one of the humans should have been keeping track of someone besides Donghyuck.

Sicheng lay curled on his stomach. Renjun laid his hand on Sicheng’s fur. Like before, Sicheng was half-empty himself, and slowly bits of what remained trickled out of him.

One yellow-orange eye opened. Renjun’s knees went weak with relief, and he knelt down beside the rock.

“You’re.” Not okay. “Awake.” For now, that was good enough. It had to be. 

With his hand in Sicheng’s fur, the full extent of Renjun’s impotency dawned on him. He’d made it to Sicheng, but for what? To sit with him and hold his hand? Like that amounted to anything when Sicheng was still draining away.

Beyond Sicheng, Renjun saw Jaemin, Jeno, and the demon still locked in their deadly dance around each other. They’d all slowed down. He caught a freeze frame shot of stillness where they stood facing each other, breathing hard. The darkness behind the demon lashed out at them, a hair’s breadth from curling around their ankles before they jumped up. Jaemin flipped in midair, Jeno slammed into the demon, and then all three were moving again. All three of them were bleeding from shallow cuts, though Jeno and Jaemin’s cuts had started to heal, while the demon’s continued to leak silver. Renjun’s attention lingered on the silver for longer than it should have—he’d always thought demons would bleed black.

Without Donghyuck’s interference, Jaemin and Jeno didn’t seem to hold the advantage anymore. It was becoming a game of who’d tire out first.

Further away, Donghyuck had surrounded himself with a barrier of fire. The flames kept the humans away, but it wouldn’t last forever, not even with Donghyuck’s power. Donghyuck lobbed rocks at the humans through the flames, but the 8 on 1 was not looking good for him, not when he wasn’t supposed to cause them any serious harm and when they had that uncanny speed of the possessed.

For the first time, the three of them looked small to Renjun. So young, so inexperienced, for all their skill and power.

Renjun’s hand clawed into his scalp. “Why can’t I do anything?” he moaned.

Sicheng’s other eye opened, roved upward, found Renjun’s face. He stretched out one paw and touched Renjun’s hand. “Is there really nothing you can do?” Sicheng said. It was the same way Sicheng had spoken other words before, many days ago. Renjun didn’t understand.

“I’ve got no magic left,” he said. He was empty, had scraped the bottom of the barrel and found nothing. Sicheng had to know that.

Then Renjun understood, and he recoiled. “I can’t,” he said. 

_ Follow your instincts,  _ he’d said.

“I can’t,” Renjun said again, hollowly.

“I’m not sure you have a choice,” Sicheng said. 

Renjun saw Jeno, Jaemin, and the demon spring apart. While they circled each other warily, at the edge of Renjun’s view one of the humans turned and lifted a gun.

Renjun wished he could have said he thought of protecting Jaemin and Jeno. Or at least that he’d acted out of fear. That he’d thought of silver bullets, remembered a night some nights before.

But all he thought was,  _ Finally _ .

Renjun didn’t have to break though the smudged outer casing this time. When he got close, it opened up before him, unfurling like flower petals. Somewhere in the back of his mind, it registered as weird, but he didn’t question it, couldn’t. No room in his head for questions.

He sank his tendrils into the energy, and his vision almost went white. It was so good.

What was it they said about eating when starving? Someone was crying out. An irritating interruption, but he could ignore it. It couldn’t be important. He devoured all the energy in front of him, every last drop, was pleased when the noise in the background stopped.

It wasn’t enough. He stretched out, searching for more. In perfect timing, the closest of the remaining 7 smudged casings unfurled, offering up its contents like the pulp of ripe fruit.

He devoured it, then the next one. It wasn’t enough.

Something inside him started to crack. It’d been cracked for a while now, he just hadn’t noticed. But now it was breaking apart.

He doubted it mattered. He was hungry, and none of this was enough.

Well,  _ these _ were not enough. There were other, better energies around him that he’d been avoiding for some reason. His vision wasn’t really working anymore, but he didn’t need it. This was another sense, and it told him there was a bright burning one and two darker ones, the last one more familiar than the rest. He’d save that one. The best for last.

His lips moved, and he had the oddest feeling that he was saying something, but if he was, it was buried beneath the clamor of rising excitement in his head. Avoiding this? Was he crazy? And his vision still wasn’t working.

Fingers might have curled over his shoulder. Someone said, “I shouldn’t.”

Someone said, “Shouldn’t you?”

Screw saving the best for last. Renjun could have all three at the same time. He would have all three. He should.

It was less than a conscious decision, in the end. His magic reached them, and when it started to take what it could, he didn’t stop it.

Energy streamed into him, and whatever was within him broke.

The dark lines in his magic expanded, spreading over the surface of his magic until it was covered completely in black and pulsed as one with the beat of his heart. It didn’t feel particularly important.

He heard his name, spoken off a familiar tongue. Shouted more like, which was familiar too. Renjun smiled wryly. Always the worst timing with that one. Couldn’t he see Renjun was in the middle of something?

_ Later _ , he wanted to say, until he heard it a third time. More of a desperate cry this time than spoken word, and it pulled his head up toward the source. In the distance, Donghyuck’s face swam up through the blurriness of his vision.

_ I’m okay, _ Renjun wanted to say, but the words froze on his lips. Donghyuck’s face shifted through a myriad of expressions, but none of them was concern. Renjun saw… Anger? Okay, that wasn’t fair. Donghyuck had been the one to get them into this. But it was there, unmistakable. Anger. Sadness, confusion, fear. 

Fear? Renjun blinked a couple times. That couldn’t be right. 

Fear. Donghyuck turning back over his shoulder, afraid. Two boys running through the forest, to where again? To a fate that could be far worse than what had been chasing them, he remembered.  _ Turn back,  _ he’d tried to say.

He  _ remembered. _

Abruptly Renjun’s vision cleared. Five of the eight humans laid on the ground, and beyond them Donghyuck held onto the side of the cavern wall with one hand, as if he couldn’t hold himself up. Between them, the demon stood some distance from Jeno and Jaemin. Jeno knelt on one knee and Jaemin leaned on him. Growing paler, their energies draining to—

A bright and two darker energies. Renjun should have known.

Two boys running to—

To him.

Renjun tore his magic away from them, letting it crash back into himself. He would’ve fallen over if it weren’t for the hand on his shoulder. He could see it all so clear now.

Renjun could see now the threads that ran out of the three humans who remained standing, follow the paths to their convergence. He didn’t want to look.

Sicheng’s face was so full of hope that tears stung at the corners of Renjun’s eyes. He wasn’t sure the tears were all his.

“You did this to me,” Renjun said, and Sicheng’s face fell. He didn’t confirm it, but he didn’t have to. Renjun saw where the lines led. “Did you drain me dry too?”

“I did it for you,” Sicheng said, very soft.

A single tear rolled down the side of Renjun’s cheek, and he hated himself for it. For crying in front of Sicheng, but more because he couldn’t hate Sicheng even now. Even more when the thing inside him, the magic, the darkness, it was all muddled now, rumbled with satisfaction and curled around itself as if readying for a nap. Fatigue crested over Renjun in a wave, and he struggled not to let it pull him under.

“So do I get rid of the witnesses now?” the other demon called over.

Rage flooded Renjun, the wild and desperate variety, the type fueled by fear. Momentarily he was wide awake, enough to hurl what power he had at the other demon. It came out in that same muddle of magic and darkness. It lashed around the demon, encircling his neck in a chain of thorns. The demon made a noise of surprise, that turned into a hiss when the chain began to close around his neck. It’d almost touched his skin when Sicheng’s hand clamped tighter on Renjun’s shoulder, some of his power drained away, and the chain faded into air.

“That was some greeting,” the demon said, rubbing his neck.

Renjun pushed weakly at Sicheng’s grip, but he was tired again. “Don’t hurt them,” he said, and wished it didn’t sound so much like a plea.

“I won’t,” Sicheng said, and rubbed Renjun’s shoulder. As if Renjun could get any comfort from him now. As if his promises meant anything. “Just leave them,” Sicheng called to the other demon.

“I don’t know if that’s smart,” the other demon said, turning to face Sicheng with a frown.

Behind him, Jeno and Jaemin rose to their feet, Jaemin still leaning on Jeno. Donghyuck had managed to push himself off the wall. So Renjun had stopped in time.

Renjun’s eyelids had grown heavy. “Don’t,” he mumbled. His friends were okay. If Renjun could just buy more time, maybe they could get out of here. It could still be okay. 

His eyes dropped to his hands. No, not hands. Black claws.

It could still be okay? Who was he kidding?

Then a thread that ran to Donghyuck glowed brighter. They heard the cry of a bird, and running feet drawing closer to the entrance of the cave.

Renjun didn’t see the other demon move to Sicheng’s side until he scooped Renjun up. Renjun might have tried to squirm out of the demon’s grasp, he wasn’t sure. He was too tired to put up much resistance. Sicheng ran ahead into one of the tunnels of the cave, and the other demon followed with Renjun in his arms.

He tilted his head so he could see over the demon’s shoulder. He wished he didn’t. Through half-hooded eyes, he saw his friends, three figures in front of many as training squadron members poured into the mouth of the cave. When his eyes met theirs, Jaemin looked away, Jeno closed his eyes and clenched his fists by his sides, and Donghyuck shouted and pointed in their direction.

The emotion on their faces when they watched him go was—not hurt. Hurt wasn’t big enough of a word to describe it. 

The black claws of Renjun’s fingers began to evaporate in wisps, unveiling his normal hands. He closed his eyes, and let fatigue pull him down and away. Where he could pretend he didn’t know what he saw.

He had a word for it now. Betrayal.

* * *

It took Renjun an embarrassingly long time to get his bearings when he awoke. He’d expected another cave, or somewhere equally dark with extra here-there-be-evil vibes, not a soft bed, surrounded by walls of baby blue and a painting of a ship on the sea.

The room had two beds and the impersonal but extravagant decor of a nice hotel room. Renjun decided that it wasn’t too far fetched for demons to hole up at a luxury hotel. Probably didn’t pay for it either.

He became aware of the murmur of voices, coming from somewhere beyond his view.

“I thought he’d remember us.” Sicheng’s voice. Renjun thought he’d feel rage hot enough to suffocate, but all he felt was some kind of dull ache.

“Maybe, in time.”

“I don’t know, Taeyong. He’s reverted back to human form too. I didn’t think that would happen.”

Renjun looked at his hands, and almost choked with overwhelming relief. Still normal.

His relief was short-lived. When he reached inside himself, he saw a dark pulsating blob, not the blinding line-streaked brightness that he was used to. He could feel the brightness still there, but underneath the rest, where it was—not,  _ not— _ supposed to be.

Tentatively, he closed his eyes and pulled what was within to the surface. It was easy as throwing on a second skin. When Renjun opened his eyes again, his fingers had extended into black claws.

He curled his fingers, pushed it back down viciously. The claws disintegrated into black wisps that curled up through the gaps of his fingers.

He curled into a ball under the blankets, not half a second before he heard the beep of the door unlocking, as if the demons had sensed him waken. They probably had. He closed his eyes in some pretense of sleep, but when Sicheng sat down on his bed and put a hand on his forehead, he flinched.

A sharp intake of breath from Sicheng, and the hand withdrew. Renjun felt no sympathy.

“Are you feeling okay?” Sicheng asked.

Renjun said nothing.

“I didn’t think freeing you would have any negative side effects, but I couldn’t be sure,” Sicheng tried.

Renjun said nothing, until it became clear they weren’t going to leave unless he spoke. Renjun’s tongue was a lead weight in his mouth. “You can’t keep me here,” he said.

Sicheng recoiled, though there was no venom in Renjun’s voice, just dullness. “You should rest, Renjun,” he said.

The other demon maneuvered his way over to Renjun’s bedside in three steps. Odd how someone could move with such beauty and be so hateful at the same time. Renjun managed to dig up some anger for him. He bared his teeth.

“Definitely doesn’t remember me,” the demon said. He said it flippantly, but there was an undertone of sadness that Renjun didn’t want to hear from him. He had nothing to be sad about.

“Why should I remember you, besides you almost tearing my friends’ faces off?” It was the longest sentence he’d gotten out so far. His tongue still felt like lead.

“Ask yourself that question, little brother,” the demon said.

Renjun stared at him, sure he’d heard wrong. Then he looked between Sicheng and the demon, waiting for someone to tell the punchline to this sick joke.

“Get some sleep,” Sicheng said.

Like Renjun was going to do that. He closed his eyes so they’d leave. As soon as they left, he’d get out of here. As soon as they left.

* * *

When Renjun woke again, it was dark. This time, he had enough strength to roll out of bed. Actually, he felt lighter and stronger than he usually did. When his feet touched the ground, the demon sat up in the other bed, and Renjun saw Sicheng under the covers by his side.

“You can’t keep me here,” Renjun said, fully aware that the demon probably could. It still felt good to say.

The demon tilted his head up, conceding the point. “I can’t, but where would you go?” he said. “You think they aren’t out there hunting for all of us right now? You most of all because they know well what you look like.”

Renjun sank back down on the bed, winded by the sudden loss of air in his lungs. He should’ve known that.

What did he think, that someone would be coming to his rescue? He couldn’t tell if it was more pathetic or funny that the thought even crossed his mind. Either way, he laughed. A bitter, acrid thing, and the demon looked at him with concern. That was funny too.

He remembered the way Jeno, Jaemin, and Donghyuck had watched him go, and his laughter choked off. The dull ache was back. It spread through his chest, curled around his lungs, squeezed out the last of that air.

* * *

The bed creaked from the weight of someone sitting down. Renjun didn’t bother to open his eyes.

“You can’t stay in bed forever,” Sicheng said.

Renjun could damn well try.

Sicheng sighed when Renjun didn’t respond. “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “In the past, when vampires and witches tried to wipe out demons—”

“You mean the war.”

Sicheng went taut as a bowstring before the arrow flew. “They can call it a war,” he said. Renjun heard him struggle to keep his voice even, wondered at it, and decided he didn’t care.

Sicheng took a breath, regained his calm. “They attacked a family of demons and left them for dead, except for one who they sealed away because they couldn’t kill him. They didn’t know not all of the family died. One had played dead, and another, his younger brother, was dying. The demon put his younger brother to sleep and kept him alive for many years on his life force alone, but it would not last forever. His younger brother continued to waste away, and the demon grew weak.

“Just when the demon thought he couldn’t continue like that much longer, he had a stroke of luck. He found the perfect vessel—”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Renjun said.

Sicheng went quiet. He fumbled with his hands. Uncertainty didn’t suit him well, and Renjun liked to see it, even though there was no point to this. Everything was already wrong. “I’d like it if you could try,” Sicheng said at length.

Renjun watched him, waited for the moment when some of that uncertainty bled into hope and Sicheng opened his mouth again. “I’d like it if you didn’t tell shit stories,” Renjun said.

* * *

Renjun tried to act like what Sicheng said didn’t affect him, but it gnawed at him for days. It wasn’t like he had much else to do but think.

The next time Sicheng came by, he caved. “Why was I a perfect vessel?” He didn’t look at Sicheng when he spoke, wouldn’t give that much ground. 

“I’m sorry, vessel wasn’t the right word,” Sicheng began, reaching for Renjun’s shoulder. Renjun was sitting up in the bed and he shifted so that Sicheng’s fingers fell short. Sicheng didn’t try again.

“I’m sure vessel was the  _ perfect  _ word,” Renjun said.

Sicheng fumbled with his hands, a motion Renjun saw too often now. He didn’t like it as much anymore; it just made him want to roll his eyes. Sometimes he liked it better when Taeyong came instead, because aside from a few slip-ups Taeyong mostly respected that he wasn’t interested in his friendship, much less an adoptive brothership.

“There wasn’t much left of you—him,” Sicheng quickly corrected when Renjun cut him a glare. “It was my last option. You were young and human enough that if he was bound within you, your body wouldn’t reject him. And witch enough that he could heal and thrive upon your power as you grew.”

“And my mother just rolled over and let you—” But Renjun knew. It was the type of knowing that made him want to swallow the words back into his mouth, but he’d set the boulder rolling and he didn’t need Sicheng to push it the rest of the way down to the bottom of the ditch.

He still did, anyway. “I cut her a deal—kill the vampire who killed her lover in exchange for binding my brother in you.”

Renjun thought of his mother, who always stood straight-backed, like she was afraid of nothing. 

“It was easy because she was sad,” Sicheng said, painfully gentle. “It’s always easy when they’re sad. I’m sure she thought that you would grow up without ever knowing of magic and demons the way most half-humans do, and I know she was sure she could find a way to get rid of my brother. I almost believed her. She was very determined.”

“So you left your brother like that? Some brother you are.”

“I had no choice,” Sicheng snapped, darkness flaring around him, and Renjun recalled that Sicheng was still one of the big bads. Renjun was going to regret it very badly if those were his last words. He tried to think of something more interesting to say, just in case, but drew a blank.

Sicheng got a grip on his temper before the darkness got anywhere close to touching Renjun, and said, “I was weakened, like I said. It took me many years of sleep to recover, and I’m still not at my full strength.”

“Unfortunate for you,” Renjun said. They lapsed into silence for a while. It wasn’t a comfortable one.

Renjun looked within himself, prodded at the darkness. It didn’t feel like a demon. Even when it’d been out of control, even when he hadn’t understood all he felt, it’d been his magic, his power _._ It’d been _his._ Satisfaction thrummed through the darkness at this thought, and Renjun shivered. “So how do I get him out of me? Then you can have your brother back, and I can be demon-free.” Renjun managed to sound flippant, but in truth his insides curled at the thought of it, the darkness and the magic within him curling too. What was wrong with him? He should want this.

“You can’t.” Sicheng’s gaze went down to his hands. They lay in his lap. “It was my last option. You—he was dying. Binding him in you made him part of you, and breaking the binding can’t change that. It’s not the most predictable, but I thought it would give you your memories back. I thought it would—”

“You thought it would change me into him,” Renjun said flatly. 

Sicheng didn’t speak for a while. Renjun thought their conversation might end like that. “You’re you, but you’re also him. You’re all that’s left of my brother now,” he said.

Renjun didn’t reply, and Sicheng left.

* * *

Renjun was tired of being stuck in a hotel room, despite the discovery of a jacuzzi in the bathroom and surprisingly good, if ridiculously overpriced, food. Honestly, Renjun didn’t know who was paying for all of it. Renjun just made sure to order the most expensive room service items out of spite.

The worst days were those he thought of Jaemin, Jeno, and Donghyuck in that cavern. That last bit would always replay and end on the view of them watching him go. 

This was one of those days, and on those days, he didn’t care, he was reckless, he tried to get under Sicheng’s skin just to see if he could. When he succeeded, the sick satisfaction of it temporarily overrode stupid ache in his chest. It never lasted long enough to matter. “All this time, when I was worried for you, when I thought you were sick, it was just because you were possessing humans,” Renjun said. “You must have thought it was funny, huh?”

“I’m sorry, Renjun. I couldn’t think of another way.”

“You’re sorry? My friends almost—I almost—” he choked off. This time it wasn’t going so well, he was only getting under his own skin. “You’re sorry.” He snorted derisively. “I almost really hurt them.” That slipped out, too honest. And it came with the thought that he could have done worse, but he didn’t dare speak that aloud.

“And I’m sorry for it, but I don’t regret it.”

_ I hate you _ , Renjun wanted to say. He couldn’t manage it. “Then the people in the city who attacked us, did you possess them too?”

“No, Taeyong did that on his own. He’s got a two birds one stone mentality, so he thought he might as well try to provoke you into using your powers.” 

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Taeyong had come in some time during their talk, and stood with his shoulder pressed against the wall.

A flash of irritation. “It did not work. I used so much of my energy possessing humans to pass you the message that he wasn’t ready, and did you listen?”

Renjun was glad he wasn’t looking at Sicheng. He couldn’t hide his relief that it wasn’t Sicheng who had sent silver bullets into Jeno and Jaemin, and he didn’t want to give Sicheng the satisfaction of seeing it.

When he had schooled his features to nonchalance, he asked, “And Park, was he your doing?” Renjun shifted so he could see all of Sicheng’s face again. He needed to know that Sicheng was telling the truth on this.

“No, he did that all on his own. A lucky coincidence.”

“Lucky? Three vampires died.”

“Yeah, and if that’s not lucky, I don’t know what is,” Taeyong said.

“What? Why?”

It was Sicheng who answered him, with a bitter little laugh. He patted Renjun’s arm. “Look how they’ve already started to fight each other.”

“You like that? Donghyuck was right. You are evil.”

Sicheng’s fingers twitched against Renjun’s arm, pinching too tight for comfort, and Renjun thought for a moment that he’d gone too far. He envisioned Sicheng ripping his throat out. “Don’t say that.” Sicheng smoothed Renjun’s hair. His hand was gentle, but he’d stopped looking at Renjun. He looked past him out the window, like he was chasing some long forgotten memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tadah all is revealed  
> finally made it to this point haha
> 
> this chp really fought me hard, hence my lateness, thx fo yo patience


	34. something to hold on to

Renjun wished his sleep was dreamless. He no longer dreamed of Donghyuck and Jeno running through the forest, his one stroke of luck. He dreamed of them though, and not just them, sometimes of that night in the cave. It hurt more when it played out closer to reality, but it was better that way, because he saw their faces but didn’t hear what they said. Sometimes Chenle was there too.

Sometimes Renjun dreamed that he was running behind some combination of the four of them. Once or twice Jisung and YangYang made it in too, though Renjun didn’t even know if YangYang had made it back to school. And if he had, how much he knew.

They’d be walking, and he’d be running behind them, calling for them to wait up. They wouldn’t turn and he’d never catch up.

A few times, he’d be chasing a singular figure. Then, when Renjun called out, “Wait!”, the figure would stop and turn. It’d be Jeno or Donghyuck most of the time, once Jaemin. Whoever it was, all they’d say was, “Why?”

That was the one iteration of his dreams that he’d wake up from unable to stifle a muted cry, his heart lurching in his chest. He hated that, because Taeyong and Sicheng slept in the same room and he didn’t want them to see it. He didn’t know what was worse, Taeyong who acted like he would get over it, or Sicheng who tried to offer him comfort and didn’t snap at him when Renjun shoved him off.

* * *

Water dripped down Renjun’s neck. He pushed his wet hair back and stared at himself in the mirror. Same dark hair, same dark brown eyes, but the flecks of orange yellow were more obvious now. For a second he wanted to claw them out, but the feeling went away just as fast. It wasn’t like they were unfamiliar after so many weeks, even if they hadn’t always been so clear. Maybe he should’ve known.

He thought he should look different, some clear marker that he’d become—had always been—some amalgamation of witch, human, and demon that should never have seen the light of day. But the most unfamiliar part of the reflection was the bathroom itself, with it’s double sink, tiled walls, and view of the skyline. The white towel he’d started to dry his hair with smelled like it’d been sterilized then sprinkled with lavender, and it made his skin crawl.

He looked the same, mostly felt the same, and it made it easy to believe he could step out back into a week prior, walk out of the bathroom into Donghyuck’s teasing banter or Chenle’s too-loud laughter or Jeno saying, “You might be human but I want to try.”  _ I want to try, want to try. _

Sometimes being the same was terrible. Sometimes it was all he could hold on to. Hope was a terrible thing.

* * *

Renjun refused to let Sicheng and Taeyong bring in someone to give him a dye job.

“How about silver?” Taeyong said. “It’s in right now.”

Ignoring his skepticism that a demon who’d been sealed off from the world for decades would know what was ‘in right now’, Renjun muttered, “I thought you didn’t want me to stand out.” He’d given Taeyong a half-assed silent treatment for several days after being brought to the hotel, but it’d been hard to keep it up when there were only three of them around.

Renjun convinced himself he’d broken his silence to gather intel on their weaknesses and plans. In truth he was bored, not good at keeping his mouth shut, and more than a little alone. Not lonely, not yet, he refused to think that, but he had the sinking feeling that he’d be stuck with no one but Taeyong and Sicheng for a long time. He tried not to think that far ahead.

There wasn’t much intel to be gathered in the first place. Whatever they might be doing, they were either really good at keeping it under wraps, or they had put it on hold to watch over Renjun.

(Or they weren’t doing anything at all, and were about to skip off into the sunset without wrecking havoc and with no one hunting them, and maybe Renjun’s mom would get out of house arrest and they’d drop him off there along the way, and it was all going to be sunshine and rainbows from here on out. But that might be wishful thinking.)

While Renjun was awake he hadn’t seen them leave the hotel suite, though he’d slept much of the first few days away, as if his body needed rest to adjust to the power now free within him. And it was free. That was certain. He still wasn’t used to the now constant thrum under his skin, and the new lightness of his body.

Renjun had entertained the thought of making some grand escape, turning himself over, and selling out Taeyong and Sicheng’s location, but:

  1. Escape was unlikely, and he doubted witches and vampires believed in a witness protection program.
  2. It wasn’t like Taeyong and Sicheng would stick it out in the hotel if he turned himself in, so there’d be no location to sell out.
  3. The one he hated to admit. He just couldn’t do it.



And there was no point in thinking of any more points. It was stupid and horrible that despite it all, Renjun didn’t want their blood on his hands.

Maybe he could convince them to clear out of town, start a farm somewhere, and raise some chickens. Or maybe not. In that scenario, he’d really be stuck alone with them until the end of his sorry life. Which wasn’t too different from his current situation, yay! Like he said, he tried not to think that far ahead.

Renjun hadn’t used magic since he’d been taken to the hotel—didn’t even know if it was magic anymore but refused to call it anything else—and pushed the itch at the tips of his fingers to the back of his mind. It was harder to ignore the growing gnawing emptiness somewhere between his stomach and chest. He spent three days denying it was hunger and another couple telling himself it’d go away after he woke up. He’d woken up with a headache instead.

“How about a light brown, if you don’t want silver? Or red? Red is nice,” Sicheng said.

“I’m not interested,” Renjun said. He imagined himself with the same shade of red-brown as Sicheng, thought they really might get mistaken for brothers then, and threw up a bit in the back of his throat.

“Then you’ll just have to wear a cap when we go out tonight,” Taeyong said.

“We’re going out?” Renjun asked, incredulous. He wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them went out, but to take him with them?

“Yes.”

Renjun waited, but Taeyong didn’t elaborate.

* * *

Renjun understood later when they stood near a large subway entrance. Foot traffic flowed around them, and over their heads billboards advertised some new movie, airing soon. This wasn’t the quieter part of the city he’d grown up in. This part stayed alive at night, bright and loud, most restaurants and stores still open, including the gigantic department store at their backs. 

“Go for it,” Taeyong said.

Renjun shoved his hands in his pockets, and refused to look at Taeyong. Even the bright colors of the trailer playing for the nth time couldn’t distract Renjun from the people around him, whether they were moving or stood still. The brightness of each spot of energy seemed to outshine the lights of the storefronts and billboards, though he knew it shouldn’t.

“I won’t,” Renjun said, more to himself than either of them.

“What did you say?” Taeyong asked.

Renjun shook his head almost imperceptibly, a twitch more than full movement. Taeyong made a noise of exasperation and made some hand gesture at Sicheng, who leaned closer to Renjun to peer at him. Renjun refused to look at him either.

“You do remember how to do it, right?” Sicheng asked.

“That’s not the problem,” Taeyong said impatiently.

Sicheng slanted an annoyed stare at him for half a second, turned back to Renjun, and leaned close so that the barest whisper of his breath ghosted over Renjun’s ear. “Remember, a little doesn’t hurt them.”

Renjun pushed him back, not hard, but it didn’t need to be. Hurt flashed across Sicheng’s face, there and gone, and he stepped back. Satisfaction and guilt mingled uncomfortably in Renjun’s chest, but it was overridden by the desire to get as far away as he could from those sweet poison words. As far away as he could from all these people around him. He couldn’t stop feeling them.

“I won’t do it,” he said, too loud this time. Taeyong cursed under his breath when a couple passerby glanced in their direction. Maybe it was the unwanted attention, or the way Renjun hunched over, curling his fingers deeper into his pockets, but Taeyong made another exasperated noise and started to guide Renjun back down the street. Renjun breathed through his nose all the way back to the hotel, as if that made any difference whatsoever. 

* * *

Renjun went into the kitchen to make himself a pot of tea, and flinched when Sicheng and Taeyong appeared at his elbow. He couldn’t get used to how silently they moved. 

“Would it help,” Taeyong said, “if you understood we don’t want to hurt you?”

Renjun pretended to consider the thought. He already understood they didn’t want to hurt him. It made no difference. “You’ve already hurt me,” he said, in lieu of an answer.

Sicheng gave Renjun an anxious once-over, as if he might uncover some injuries he missed before. Taeyong leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “You’re not hurt,” he said.

“Taking everyone I care about away from me should count for something, don’t you think?”

Sicheng flinched at that, probably not from the accusation but from being excluded from the people Renjun cared about. Renjun wished it were true. He’d tried to hate Sicheng for a while, and having failed at that, tried to feel nothing at all. It wasn’t worth examining how much of a lost battle that was—how was he supposed to know what feelings were real and what was some remnant of the scrap of Sicheng’s brother inside him?

Taeyong placed a hand on Sicheng’s knee, a quiet reassurance. Maybe that he’d been there even if Renjun wasn’t. It was a warning too, for Renjun, a push-too-far-and-you’ll-regret-it. Brother or not, Taeyong had a clear favorite. Or maybe he’d realized there wasn’t enough of his brother left in Renjun to care.

“And if that doesn’t count, hurting them should,” Renjun said.

“You’re the one that hurt them,” Taeyong pointed out.

Renjun shuddered violently, and almost burned his fingers on the teapot. Stupid. He’d walked himself into that one. And he was there again, running after them and none of them would turn, and how could he blame them? He was running and calling and they could hear him but they wouldn’t turn, and the ground was coming apart beneath his feet.

Renjun clenched his hands, unclenched them. He thought he saw black claws, and jerked back so hard he almost fell.

Sicheng was by his side lightning quick, and he steadied Renjun with a palm against his shoulder. “None of us will hurt them again,” Sicheng promised. Taeyong frowned at Sicheng, but didn’t argue. Sicheng looked over at him until he tilted his chin up in assent, still frowning.

“How can you say that when you’re literally working to get vampires and witches all killed off? Is it that easy to lie to my face?” Renjun spat. “Oh, but wait, you’ve had plenty of practice.”

Sicheng flinched again, but he also frowned. “We’re not trying to get them all killed off,” he said slowly.

“Then what was that about, ‘Look how they’re fighting’?”

Taeyong cut in. “We want them to break off their alliance and fight each other, yes. I’d be happy if they destroyed each other in the process, but I doubt we’ll get that lucky.”

“Don’t call that lucky,” Renjun snapped.

Taeyong flicked him an unimpressed glance. “It guarantees our safety. We’re not going to get involved any further than that. It’s too risky, as much as I’d like to see their mutual destruction.”

“What, and you think they’ll just forget about you?”

“When they’re fighting each other? Yes.”

Renjun’s hackles rose at the thought of his friends forced to face off against one another. He didn’t realize Sicheng’s hand was still on his shoulder until Sicheng squeezed it in warning. Renjun shrugged off Sicheng’s hand. “I don’t understand why this is necessary. Why can’t—” he choked a bit, swallowed, “—we just leave?”

The  _ we _ tasted like ashes in his mouth, but Taeyong heard it and softened. “I refuse to live like a hunted animal this time,” he said.

* * *

Renjun refused to go out again, despite Sicheng alternately cajoling and pleading with him, and Taeyong coming as close to dragging him out as he could without carrying him out by the scruff of his neck. They didn’t force him though, and the freedom settled badly in the pit of his stomach.

If he gave in now, it would be his own choice.

He tried to find ways to distract himself, but there was only so much he could do in a hotel room, and his restlessness irritated all of them. Taeyong simply left when he was annoyed, but Sicheng tried to push through it.

“So when you and Taeyong go out, is it just to drain people dry? Is that your idea of fun?”

“You know we don’t do that,” Sicheng said.

“Do I? You know I don’t remember,” Renjun said. He had a white bath towel laid out in front of him, and was trying to fold it into a swan.

The edge of Sicheng’s mouth tugged downward. He’d gotten better at hiding his hurt. Unfortunate for him that Renjun had gotten better at reading him. Even if he hadn’t, it wasn’t hard to hurt someone when you were their amnesiac substitute of a beloved younger brother. At the most basic level, he just had to exist.

Unfortunate for Renjun that he didn’t get much satisfaction out of hurting Sicheng, not anymore. Sicheng didn’t need to know that though.

“We don’t need energy the way you do,” Sicheng said, ever infuriating with his patience.

“What?” Renjun narrowed his eyes at Sicheng, forgetting the swan. It hadn’t been going so well anyway. “What does that mean?”

“Your body isn’t made to contain demon and witch power at the same time. They feed off each other and drain each other, so you need to compensate.”

Renjun wished he hadn’t asked. “So it’s just me,” he mumbled.

“It’s not so bad—” Sicheng tried, but Renjun was already up from his seat. He walked over to the window, put his forehead against the glass.

Sicheng followed, and Renjun didn’t care enough to tell him to keep his distance. Or maybe he was desperate enough that he wanted someone, anyone, who cared about him close by, even a demon who’d betrayed his trust. The lights of cars lined the highways below, blazing orange gold through the city. 

“Why do you possess people then?” Renjun asked. “If you don’t need energy to live and it tires you out?”

“It’s not supposed to tire us out. That only happens when it’s done by force. A proper pact is different.” Renjun thought that’d be it, but Sicheng continued, apparently not worried that Renjun would spill all his demon secrets the first time he got the chance. “We grant them a desire in exchange for free access to their energy. As you said, we don’t need it to live, but drawing on their energy gives us power, and when they die, it’s all ours. The most powerful demons have had hundreds of pacts in the past.”

“And ‘drawing on energy’ is different from taking it how?”

“I can’t take energy the way you do.”

Renjun lifted his forehead from the glass. It left a smudge that he tried to wipe off with a finger. “Bullshit. You took energy from me easily enough.”

“We’re related,” Sicheng said, like that was an answer. “The magic you have makes it easy for you. Why do you think we form pacts with witches despite the danger of it?”

“Danger?”

“A pact with a witch requires giving up our weak spots. That’s why it was easy for them to kill so many of us.”

Renjun saw Sicheng slipping away into memory. “So what does it give you?” he asked quickly, before the conversation got completely derailed.

“As long as the witch is willing, the ability to take energy from humans without a pact, as you do, and the ability to combine our powers to control others.”

Renjun remembered the black thorn cages. “I can’t believe Taeyong gave up his weak spot to Park,” Renjun said contemptuously.

“He didn’t.”

“But you just said—”

“He was summoned by blood magic. That’s different. He was forced to obey Park. He could speak to Park, trick him into listening to his suggestions, but he wouldn’t have gotten out of it so soon if Park hadn’t been weakened—”

The realization hit Renjun like a steam train. “That time in the woods. You  _ wanted  _ me to drain Park. Did you set it up?”

“Renjun I didn’t—”

“Please leave.” Renjun went for anger, but his voice cracked.

He saw Sicheng’s reflection in the glass hesitate for a beat before turning and striding soundlessly out of the hotel room. He watched the lit windows of the skyscraper across from their hotel. One of the lights winked out, a person turning in for the night perhaps, and he thought of all the people in that building, all the people above and below him in the hotel, people in their cars and on the streets. He couldn’t see the stars.

* * *

“Hold him,” Taeyong said, as he walked into the room, pulling someone along behind him. 

Renjun should’ve taken that moment to bolt, but instead he stupidly craned his neck to see who it was. Sicheng didn’t react so slowly. In an instant he had a hand clamped on Renjun’s shoulder, and though he didn’t put much pressure on it, Renjun knew if he wouldn’t be able to move.

Even though Renjun was slightly lighter on his feet than he used to be, that was about it. He had a fraction of Sicheng or Taeyong’s raw strength and speed.

Taeyong led the human over, stood him in front of Renjun. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” Taeyong said.

Renjun shook his head mutely. Taeyong sighed. The human was no one Renjun knew, and he doubted the demons knew him either, but from the glow of his energy he was exactly who Renjun would’ve chosen for himself. If he’d had to choose. Not that he was thinking about it.

“At least your stubbornness hasn’t changed,” Taeyong said. He reached down and took Renjun’s hand. Renjun stared without comprehension at the junction of their connected fingers until Taeyong guided Renjun’s hand to the human’s wrist and curled his fingers around it.

Energy buzzed against Renjun’s palm, an obscene amount for a human.  _ Wonder if he’s part something too. _

That was the last rational thought Renjun remembered having. After that, he wanted. He could barely call it hunger, it was more like desperation. He didn’t think about draining the human, or holding back, or what would happen either way. He didn’t have time to. He was already pulling the energy into him, as much instinct as breathing.

Someone jerked him back sharply, and he turned with teeth bared, ready to eviscerate whoever would take him away from  _ this.  _ He stopped with his hand raised, black thorns spiraling out from his fingertips, the end a hair’s breadth away from Sicheng’s nose. Behind him he heard a thud, like two solid objects colliding.

“Stop,” Sicheng said, and Renjun had the impression it wasn’t the first time he’d said it. His voice was calm but his eyes gravitated toward the black thorns.

Renjun pushed himself back, the black thorns spiraling back into his skin, and fell off the bed. He landed close to the man’s feet, and remembered what he’d been in the middle of with a rush of pounding want, want, want that had him simultaneously sick to the stomach and reaching for the man’s skin again.

Renjun threw himself back. He scrambled backward on his hands and feet until his back hit the glass door out to the balcony. He drew his legs up against his chest and locked his arms around them, the glass cool against his back.

He was breathing fast and shallow, in out, in out. He started a count to ten to keep himself from hyperventilating, and made it to six before his gaze flicked back over to the man, who now swayed on his feet, half-dazed, held up by Taeyong. The timing might have been coincidence because the man wasn’t looking directly at Renjun, but it hardly mattered. Renjun looked up at the man and the man whimpered, and Renjun went dizzy with how much he liked it.

The mental calculation was fast and thorough. How much juice the man had left, how much Renjun could get out of him. Renjun dug his fingers into his arms. How fast his magic could bridge the gap between them and make him make that sound again… 

Renjun had already half-risen to his feet when a hand slammed into his chest and pushed him against the door hard enough that it rattled. Taeyong’s head blocked most of Renjun’s view, but in the periphery of his vision he saw Sicheng escorting the man out. Renjun struggled against Taeyong’s hold, snarling. What were they doing? He wasn’t done, he would make them regret this, he would hurt them— 

His magic spilled out of him, curling after the man, but Sicheng was faster. He got the man out the door, and must have picked up into a run after because they both faded fast from Renjun’s senses. Renjun’s magic washed against the wood of the closed door, spilled out a short way into the hallway beyond.

Renjun was jerked back to himself when Taeyong shook him, knocking the back of his skull not so gently against the glass. Taeyong held Renjun there until he stopped struggling and went limp in Taeyong’s hold. Then Taeyong slowly let him go, and stepped back.

“You get it now?” Taeyong said.

For the space of three heartbeats, Renjun didn’t move. Then he let his head fall to his chest. His nails had dug three red crescents into his left arm.

The next time Taeyong and Sicheng went out into the city, Renjun went with them. They went to the same subway station, and stood in the shadow cast by the side of the department store. A child ran across the billboard above, and the tagline “Run faster, jump higher” flashed against an orange background. While the child leapt and the camera panned in on his sneakers, Renjun took energy bit by bit from every passerby until he could pretend he didn’t know what hunger felt like.

* * *

The visitor came in the evening. When Taeyong opened the door, Sicheng shoved Renjun behind himself. Renjun couldn’t see who stood in the doorway with both Sicheng and Taeyong’s bodies in the way, aside from a hint of a dark jacket.

Renjun sent out his magic to feel at the stranger, but Sicheng’s hand tightened on his arm. Sicheng shook his head without turning from the door.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” a male voice drawled.

“No,” Taeyong said, politely conversational.

The stranger moved his head to look around Taeyong. Renjun saw a silver earring. “Why hello, Sicheng. How fun to see you here.”

“Hello,” Sicheng said quietly.

“You aren’t looking so hot after a couple decades. I would have expected better from someone who wasn’t sealed in with the rest of us.”

Sicheng didn’t respond, and the stranger heaved a theatrical sigh. “Shy as ever, I see. Well, I do try. Oh, and who is that?” For the first time, the voice lost its air of bored amusement. “A human?”

Taeyong’s power flared out, not at the stranger but around himself, filling the room. Sicheng wrapped his power around himself and Renjun. Renjun wondered if they expected him to do the same, but Sicheng’s hand was still tight on his wrist and each time Renjun so much as twitched his magic, Sicheng shook his head.

“Okay, okay, no need to get all defensive. I’m not that interested in your business.”

“Why are you here?” Taeyong asked, still polite, still conversational, but Renjun could see the lines of tension in his back.

“You must understand that if I’m here the Seal has weakened further—oh, and by the way, I must say I’m disappointed you left without me.”

“Get to the point.”

“Both of you are still so boring.” But all the playfulness left the voice. “I came to ask you to help me free the others.”

“There’s only one other you care about, isn’t there?”

“Oh, you caught me. So, will you?”

Sicheng’s hand was so tight on Renjun’s arm that it had started to cut off his circulation.

“We’re not interested in getting involved,” Taeyong said.

The voice went playful again. “Ah, but here’s the thing. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. There were many questions about your loyalties during the war, before that unfortunate incident, of course.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, no.” The stranger laughed. “If it was, you would know. Take it as a warning. I’ll give you a week to reconsider. I hope you make the right choice.”

After the stranger left, Renjun shook his arm for Sicheng to let go. It took several tries to get Sicheng to notice.

Taeyong kicked the wall so hard it left a dent in the side. Not for the first time, Renjun questioned how they were paying for this, and now how they would pay for that. He hoped they weren’t expecting him to fix it with magic. That was more Donghyuck’s realm of expertise.

* * *

Renjun pretended to be asleep while Taeyong and Sicheng murmured quietly to each other.

“I don’t know if we have a choice. This changes everything.”

“This is like what happened last time,” Sicheng said, half-frantic. “You know what happened last time—”

“I know. But this time we know we can’t trust them. We’ll be using them instead of the other way around.”

“You can’t know that, you don’t even know if…”

“I know.”

They stepped out further toward the entrance of the hotel room, and Renjun didn’t catch the rest.

* * *

Taeyong tossed Renjun’s cell phone at him. His new and minorly improved reflexes saved him from getting smacked in the forehead, but he deflected it instead of catching it and it skidded across the floor.

He chased after it and scooped it up before Taeyong could change his mind. When he turned it on, it was at full charge. He didn’t know how they’d charged it when neither of them had phones, but he didn’t ask.

“I’m going to ask a favor of you,” Taeyong said. “Is there anyone you trust in your contacts?”

Renjun faltered, but it was a different question that ran through his mind. Was there anyone who still trusted him?

His finger hovered over the call button for a long time. He thought about how many ways it could go wrong, how the voice on the other side could crack him. He told himself he was being dramatic. He was still telling himself that when the call went through.

For a full five seconds, the line was silent. Then, “Hello?”

Renjun couldn’t speak for another couple seconds, and when he did find his voice it was thick and shaky. “Donghyuck.”

There was nothing in Donghyuck’s voice to indicate forgiveness, but Renjun would rather have heard anger than the flat neutral sound coming across the line.

* * *

Even though Donghyuck agreed to meet, Renjun thought the odds of him showing up were 50-50. He wasn’t sure he was ready to see Donghyuck and almost chickened out, but he needed to know if that flat voice translated into the real life person. Though he wasn’t sure what to do if it did.

He came knowing it might be a trap, and wouldn’t have cared if Sicheng didn’t insist on coming with him.

“I didn’t ask you to come. You should at least disguise yourself,” Renjun told Sicheng, but Sicheng seemed to think gloves and brown contacts were enough of a disguise. The gloves somehow fit his claws, but made his fingers look unusually long. Besides, who wore gloves on a warm autumn evening like this?

“I’m here to protect you,” Sicheng proclaimed.  _ And to keep me from running,  _ Renjun thought sourly, though he actually didn’t know what they’d do if he tried. Then again, where would he go?

Who’d want a bastardized witch-demon-human around? Maybe he could tough it out on a part-time job somewhere, until someone spotted him and dragged him off to a nice cozy jail cell. Though that was assuming they had jails, and that they’d be willing to waste a jail cell on him. They couldn’t fault him for his optimism.

Maybe he should stick with Sicheng and Taeyong. At least they wanted him around. It wasn’t a place to belong, but it was a place to exist, and maybe that was as good as it got.

Renjun swirled the ice cubes around in his glass. Ten minutes had passed since the designated meet up time. Renjun had just about decided Donghyuck was going to be a no-show when Donghyuck slid into the booth across from him, with Professor Seo in tow.

Donghyuck had gotten his hair cut and dyed since Renjun last saw him, and light brown strands curled just under his ears. It made Renjun feel like the world had tilted on its axis, and he couldn’t explain why.

“Long time no see,” Donghyuck said, neutral flatline expression plus neutral flatline voice. It was 10 times worse in person.

Renjun had so much he wanted to say to Donghyuck, but he blanked on all of it, leaving a jumble of nonsensical explanations and pleading that he couldn’t say in front of Sicheng or Professor Seo, and didn’t much want to say to Donghyuck either. Instead he blurted, “Professor Seo leads the training squadrons?”

“Surprise.” Donghyuck waved his hands. The tinge of sarcasm was a small comfort.

Donghyuck could be lying, but that he’d brought a plus one at all was beyond Renjun’s expectation. Renjun had expected him to storm the place in force, or come alone as a fuck-you-I’m-not-scared, with some elaborate scheme at work in the background. Those were Donghyuck things to do, not acquiescing to the evil demon’s requests.

A waiter brought over several platters of meat. Professor Seo placed a few slabs of pork belly on the grill, where they began to sizzle between them.

When the smell of crisping meat filled the air, Sicheng spoke, “You got our message then. We’re looking for an alliance.” With a small, bitter twist in his mouth, he added, “Like last time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> went into this weekend like i got this, gonna finish it, so motivated  
> then i went on youtube and was like nope just gonna sit on my ass instead  
> so instead i offer you 5k of vaguely melancholy vibes whoops
> 
> also i feel like this happens a lot but sorry i am very behind on responding to comments i will try to catch up during the week but it may not happen. so i apologize in advance if the updates answer your questions before i do (and yes i'm acting like i actually answer questions in the comments haha)


	35. it was blinding, this beautiful world

“We’re looking for an alliance. Like last time,” Sicheng said.

Donghyuck narrowed his eyes. “What the hell do you mean—?”

Professor Seo held waved a hand at him. Donghyuck looked about to argue, but he made an aborted noise in his throat, tossed his head, and went quiet. “Why would we want a repeat of last time?” Professor Seo said. “We already know your kind cannot be trusted.”

Sicheng’s jaw tightened, and his eyes flashed in a way Renjun read as danger. Despite how much Renjun didn’t want to touch Sicheng—he didn’t want Sicheng to get the impression that Renjun had forgiven him—he placed a hand on Sicheng’s arm. Sicheng relaxed at the touch, but only a little. Donghyuck followed the movement of Renjun’s hand, his expression pinched.

“Last time we helped you subdue one of the most powerful demons in existence. It was you who repaid us with slaughter.” It was more a snarl than speech.

Professor Seo frowned at the word slaughter, like he did not understand, like he suspected a trick. “Demons slaughtered many of us,” Professor Seo said. He spoke without anger, without grief. Simply, a fact. “Too many. A number we cannot account for unless the alliance had been broken.”

“Not by my family. We fought alongside you, always.”

Professor Seo set down his glass, and folded his hands in front of him. “Perhaps. But there’s no proof that you’re speaking the truth,” he said. Sicheng’s jaw tightened again. Renjun kept his hand on Sicheng’s arm, but he wasn’t sure it’d do much good if Sicheng decided to leap across the table and strangle Seo, for example. Someone like Seo might be able to take Sicheng, but somehow the idea of Sicheng getting injured didn’t make Renjun feel any better. 

“But you are here anyway.” Sicheng managed to sound like he only half wanted to strangle Seo.

“I am willing to consider all options. Unlike some others, I have thought about what reasons would make you take this kind of risk.” Professor Seo could have been a vampire then. His face was not stone, not exactly, but Renjun had no idea what he was thinking.

Sicheng leaned close to Seo, who didn’t flinch. “No, I think you know the reasons. You’re here because you know your Seal is weakening. We told you who has escaped, and even if you don’t believe that, you know it will not be long.” Sicheng leaned even closer, whispered a word Renjun did not catch. A name. “...will be free soon. I think you know you cannot defeat him without us.”

Professor Seo picked up his glass again, tipped it. The ice cubes clinked against the edge of the glass, and he squinted at them as if the sound perplexed him. On the grill between them, the meat had started to burn. “Perhaps.”

Sicheng did not relax, but he sat back.

“Donghyuck, Renjun, if you could spare us a moment alone,” Professor Seo said.

“You can’t be seriously considering—”

“Donghyuck.”

“Fine.” Donghyuck slapped both hands down on the table, pushed himself up, and pushed past Professor Seo. He inclined his head at Renjun. “You coming or what?” It was the closest he’d sounded to himself since he’d arrived, and Renjun was suddenly terrified.

Sicheng nodded, so Renjun had no choice. He followed Donghyuck to the restaurant bathroom.

The bathroom was empty aside from someone washing his hands. As soon as he left, Donghyuck pulled Renjun into the largest stall and slid the latch closed behind him. Donghyuck crossed his arms and continued to watch Renjun with a neutral flatline expression. The two feet of space between them felt like miles.

Eventually, Donghyuck dipped his head, cast a half smile at the ground, and said, “Do you have nothing to say to me? So you’re a messenger boy for the demons now?”

“I’m not.”

“Then what? Oh I get it. You’re not a messenger boy for the demons; you’re one of them. I’m surprised to see you without the claws and all, thought you’d want to keep up your real appearance now that the truth is out.”

“It’s not my real appearance,” Renjun snapped. Not as long as he could help it. “And I’m not one of them.”

The half smile faded from Donghyuck’s face. “Then tell me the truth. Since when did you know your familiar was a demon? Since when did you know you were a demon?”

“I’m not—that.” Renjun shook his head. He tried to take a step back, but the back of his leg hit the rim of the toilet seat. He couldn’t escape Donghyuck’s stare or his voice, both calm and flat as he called Renjun a demon. Couldn’t Donghyuck see what he was doing to him? “I’m just—” _A container._ But that wasn’t true. “I’m just part de…” He couldn’t say it. He swallowed, hoping saliva would make his throat work again. “There’s a part of a demon inside of me. I didn’t know.”

He peeked up at Donghyuck between his bangs. Donghyuck hadn’t moved. He wished Donghyuck would shout at him, or shake him, do something.

“I didn’t know. I didn’t sell you out,” he said, as if repeating himself would make a difference. Wasn’t that the definition of insanity? His voice broke at the end, and rang loud and pitiful in the bathroom. He turned to the side, where someone had scratched in an ‘I waz here’ next to several badly rendered dicks. Or maybe they just seemed badly rendered because they had started to blur before his eyes. God, this was pathetic. He was losing it in front of bathroom wall dicks with Donghyuck watching on. Looking away was not enough to hide from this—he’d have to drown himself in the toilet after. 

A hand touched his cheek. “Renjun,” Donghyuck said, and it wasn’t that blank flat tone, but it sounded just as foreign. Renjun expected anger, sarcasm, not uncertainty. It sounded wrong in Donghyuck’s mouth.

Renjun didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t resist letting Donghyuck guide his face back to the front. Could not resist searching Donghyuck’s face. What he saw there came too close to vulnerability. It was terrifying. 

“Don’t,” Renjun said.

But Donghyuck wouldn’t be Donghyuck if he didn’t ignore Renjun whenever it was convenient. “I really, really want to believe you,” Donghyuck said.

And Renjun really, really wanted to believe that. But if he did and it was a lie, he wouldn’t be able to handle that. “But you can’t,” Renjun finished.

Donghyuck was quiet. Someone entered the bathroom, used a urinal, didn’t wash his hands, and left. “I shouldn’t,” he said. Renjun focused on the zipper of Donghyuck’s jacket, an old blue one Renjun used to borrow when he was too lazy to do laundry. Donghyuck’s voice dipped lower, and Renjun almost didn’t make out the rest. “It doesn’t mean that I don’t.”

The edges of the zipper blurred. “I’m sorry,” Renjun said. He didn’t know what he was apologizing for, or if he was apologizing to Donghyuck or himself.

Silence again, but the weight of Donghyuck’s hand against his face was enough, and even if after this everything went wrong, Renjun could hold onto this moment. After a while Donghyuck stepped back. “Renjun Huang saying sorry to me? What has the world come to?” he said, halfway to levity but not quite there.

“Don’t get used to it,” Renjun said. Neither of them laughed, but that was okay.

“We’d better get back. I think that should have been enough time,” Donghyuck said. It was nowhere near enough time. Renjun had never thought he would think that about a public bathroom stall, but here he was.

* * *

Taeyong, Sicheng, and Renjun walked up the steps to an arched doorway. Taeyong and Sicheng were in full demon form, letting darkness billow around them. The building stretched up and out to both sides, lined with pillars and tall windows. The whole structure glowed orange against the darkening sky. Renjun saw some familiar black cars parked to the side of the roadway. So some of the vampires had already arrived.

A witch and a vampire in training squadron colors peeled off from the pillars closest to the door when they drew close. One of them was Johnny, though he gave no indication that he recognized Renjun. Renjun didn’t recognize the vampire.

“We’ll lead you in,” Johnny said, and took them through the doors. Neither Johnny nor the vampire showed any outward signs of aggression. Johnny was polite, asking if they’d like any refreshment and tossing out some facts about the history of the building as he led them through the lobby. The conversation in the lobby died down as they passed, and Renjun didn’t miss the groups that watched them as they passed. Some stared openly while others were more subtle about it. Renjun also didn’t miss how Johnny and the vampire took the shortest path through the lobby, skirting all the groups. Renjun couldn’t help wondering what they thought of all this. He doubted he would ever find out.

Renjun shivered at the number of people he saw in the lobby and the sheer power he felt from some of them. True to his word, Professor Seo must have brought in the most influential witches and vampires to this negotiation. Renjun didn’t know how he’d gotten them to agree to it, especially with the loathing some of them shot in the demons’ direction. Then again, no one had agreed to much yet. Professor Seo had promised them a negotiation, nothing more.

“Be ready to clear out if they don’t agree to an alliance,” Taeyong had said on the way there. He hadn’t mentioned what they all knew, that clearing out wouldn’t be so easy.

“You travel far to get here?” Johnny asked.

“Not too far,” Taeyong said vaguely.

Johnny and the vampire led them down a couple hallways. As they walked, Renjun felt a surge of a familiar energy. He turned and saw Jeno talking to Donghyuck at the side of the hall. Jeno had his back to them, but Donghyuck saw him. After a moment’s hesitation, Donghyuck lifted a hand. Renjun had started to lift a hand back when Jeno turned. Both of them halted, Jeno stock still and like he’d seen a ghost, Renjun with his hand half lifted.

“Come along,” Johnny said, and before a single word could pass Renjun’s lips—if he could speak at all, he wasn’t sure on that front—Sicheng pulled him away after them.

Jeno’s mouth opened, but he didn’t speak either, or if he did Renjun didn’t hear. They turned the corner and Renjun lost sight of him.

They went up a staircase to a room in a deserted section of the building. Johnny unlocked the room, and passed Taeyong the keys.

“The room’s been warded off so that no one should be able to get inside unless you explicitly let them in.” Johnny handed over a map of the building’s interior. “Some vampires will be staying in this section and some witches there. I’m sure I don’t need to say this, but those areas are off limits.” Johnny traced circles around a couple sections of the map. “You are free to go to these areas if you like, but I wouldn’t recommend wandering around too much. We’ll be going around the halls, but we can’t 100% guarantee there won’t be problems, you understand.”

“Understandable,” Taeyong said.

“And for food, we weren’t sure what you like so…”

“Whatever you’re serving the witches will do for us too,” Taeyong interjected smoothly.

“Okay, fantastic. We’ll leave you to it then.” It was the only clue Renjun had to how eager they were to get out of there. Johnny acted the part well. Even on the way out, he was relaxed and polite.

After the door shut behind them, Renjun sat down in a chair by the door while Taeyong and Sicheng inspected the room. The walls were thin enough that he heard the faintest, “Demons eat human food?”

“Dude, I called it. You owe me twenty.”

“No, you definitely said they eat people, not people food.”

“I was joking. Just give me the money.”

After a while, Taeyong joined Renjun in sitting by the door, while Sicheng continued to inspect the room. After he was done, the two of them went back to the door.

“I thought he said not to wander around,” Renjun said.

“We’ll be discrete,” Sicheng said. They both pulled in the darkness spilling out around them, as if to prove a point. It exposed matching black t-shirts and pale arms with swirls of black that curled up along their forearms from their hands. Renjun made no attempt to tell them that the matching clothes made them look like creepy horror movie twins, and made them stand out more.

“You, however, stay in here,” Sicheng added, poking his head back around the edge of the door.

“I’m the least conspicuous—”

The door closed behind them, leaving him alone.

* * *

Renjun didn’t know how long Sicheng and Taeyong were gone for. He fell asleep on one of the plush beds in the room, and when he awoke they were still out. They might have come back sometime in between because one of the lamps was on, and a tray of food had been taken inside.

Renjun had eaten about half of it when he felt a faint touch of familiar energy again. He didn’t try to think it through. He burst out of the room and flew down the hall, almost running. He could feel himself getting closer to the familiar energy, tried to tug on it and hold it in place, and it stopped as if it’d felt him. He turned the corner and there it was. Familiar back, familiar head of black hair. Standing still.

He hadn’t realized it, but he was running now, his hand outstretched. He stopped several steps away, let his hand drop. The rush passed, and he felt stupid now to run out like that. He should turn back.

“Jeno,” he said, and Jeno turned.

Jeno was wearing all black, and that blank vampire mask Renjun had grown to hate. But unlike with Donghyuck it wasn’t unfamiliar to him. “Don’t say my name, demon,” Jeno said.

So. Demon. If that was how Jeno wanted to play it, Renjun could do it too. No emotion, nothing, he told himself. “So what should I call you?” Renjun said, and his voice honest-to-god trembled.

Damn it.

Jeno’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and the mask slipped a fraction. There was anger there, but also, was that...pity? Renjun’s hands curled at his sides. Jeno could go choke on that.

“You know what, don’t answer that. I don’t care,” Renjun said.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t care, would you?”

All of a sudden, Renjun was furious. He stepped up to Jeno and shoved him, which didn’t move him because Renjun had forgotten. Stupid vampire strength. “Isn’t it you that doesn’t care? Why are you even wandering around here if you don’t want to see a demon? Go crawl back out of here if you’re scared of me.”

“I’m not scared of you,” Jeno said.

Renjun leaned over until he could whisper to the side of Jeno’s jaw. “Really?” He blew air against Jeno’s face and to his delight Jeno shivered. “Sure you’re not scared. You’re terrified.”

Renjun’s back hit the wall. Jeno had shoved him against it. It might leave a bruise, but it was worth it to see Jeno’s lips pull back, his eyes bright with anger and something else Renjun couldn’t name. Jeno’s mask had cracked, and it was Renjun who had cracked it. Jeno leaned down, and now Renjun felt his breath when he spoke. Renjun didn’t shiver—he thrummed. He would come out on top. “You want to repeat that?” Jeno said.

Renjun smiled. “If you want. You’re so scared of—”

The rest of his words choked off in the heat of Jeno’s mouth. Their teeth collided painfully, but that didn’t stop Jeno. He just shifted his head. The wall was hard against the back of Renjun’s head, against his back, and Jeno was pushing him into it, pushing at him like he was going to eat him alive. Traitorous heat gathered at the bottom of Renjun’s gut. His lips parted, and Jeno made a derisive sound, almost a laugh. “So that shuts you up,” Jeno said against his mouth. Renjun’s blood boiled.

Renjun bit Jeno’s lower lip, hard. With a curse, Jeno drew back. He wiped his mouth with his hand. Renjun was pleased to see it left a line of blood on the back of his hand.

“You’re such a…” Jeno paused, watching him.

Renjun tried to get his breathing to slow down, but the quick rise fall of his chest betrayed him. He could barely stop himself from trembling all over. He didn’t know what he looked like.

A slow, infuriating smile spread over Jeno’s face. “Who’s scared of who, now?” he said.

“Fuck you,” Renjun said, and stalked past him down the hall. He didn’t look back to see if Jeno was following.

* * *

Renjun should have gone back to the room, but he wasn’t thinking straight. He hadn’t been thinking straight when he’d left the room, seeking after Jeno as if Jeno could—what? Comfort him? Pat him on the back and tell him everything was okay? Hilarious. He should be a comedian.

Point was, he’d forgotten to take a pair of keys with him. And his cellphone, though he had no one to call, so that didn’t matter. Point was, he was lost. He’d been lost since several turns ago.

He sat down in a corner by one of the windows. It’d taken a lot of angry stomping, but now he was more tired than angry. He didn’t know what time it was, but he saw the moon outside, dangling in the sky as cars honked at each other below.

He should probably figure out how to get back. If Taeyong and Sicheng returned to the room and found him gone, they might assume the worst, and he didn’t want to be the reason negotiations broke down before they began. He wasn’t looking forward to explaining that he’d disobeyed them, and forgotten his keys, and gotten lost alone.

The sound of voices made him rise to his feet. He didn’t want to run into anyone, but the chances of a clean getaway went to nil when he met eyes with a group of witches coming down the hall. He put his head down and started walking. Easy, casual. They might not know who he was.

“Hey, isn’t that…?”

So much for that. Renjun walked faster.

“Hey you,” one of them called.

Renjun debated the merits of pretending he didn’t hear, but he heard more voices coming from the direction he was headed toward. He turned slowly. Too slow maybe, because by the time he was facing them they’d fanned out in a half-circle around him. He counted four of them. He hadn’t noticed earlier that one of them was from his year. That explained how they’d recognized him so fast.

Renjun tried to appeal to the one who knew him, gave him a pleading look. They weren’t friends but they’d been in the same class for almost four years. That had to mean something. He was pretty sure he looked harmless, and was all too aware he was still in the long t-shirt and shorts he’d worn before napping. 

“Makes sense why he was so bad at magic if he was a demon spy all along,” the witch said. Renjun fought a rise of irritation. It wasn’t like he was much better, was he saying he was a demon too? Renjun could show him what it really meant to be a demon.

His power stirred at thought, but it was still sated from the day before and easy to hold back. Wanting to hold back was the hard part.

“You think I’ll get a prize if I mess him up?” one of the other witches said.

“You can’t do that,” Renjun said.

“I don’t think anyone would complain.”

“I don’t know about this,” one of them said, but another interrupted, “I think you’d be a hero. A man of the people, truly.”

The witch’s energy flared, and Renjun ducked just in time. A rush of heat went over his head. He realized they were serious when he saw the scorch mark on the wall. Renjun scrambled back to the sound of laughter.

“Looks like a demon isn’t all that.” He didn’t know which one said that.

Renjun dashed for the stairs, but a gust of wind rattled the windows and knocked him flat on his front. The other voices coming down the hall were getting closer, and he had to get away before they got here. If they saw, they’d probably think he instigated this, and negotiations would be done for.

“Hey, I don’t think you should go that far,” one of them said. Renjun felt a flare of hope.

It guttered to nothing when he saw the face of the closest witch. That hate was personal. The witch dropped to his knees beside Renjun, and lit a ball of fire in his hand. “A demon who can hide among us is the worst abomination of all,” he said. “I’m just going to make him a little easier to recognize.” He brought the fire toward Renjun’s face.

Then the witch yelped. Fire blazed orange and hot over his head, singing a line through the top of his hair. Something slammed into him, a blur that Renjun’s brain belatedly registered as...Jaemin? The pressure pushing Renjun down vanished.

By the time Renjun sat up, two of the four witches had been tackled to the ground. Jisung stood over one of the witches on the ground, while Chenle kept a knee in his back. Donghyuck sat on the other witch’s stomach, who managed a muffled,” Get off me” and got an elbow in the groin.

Jeno had another witch pinned against the wall, arms twisted behind her back. His hair was a little disheveled, like he’d run. Renjun mouthed, “Why?” but he didn’t respond. Behind him, Jaemin held onto the last witch with fingers twisted into his remaining hair.

YangYang stooped down in front of Renjun and reached out a hand. Renjun took it, hoped YangYang couldn’t feel how much Renjun’s hand shook as he pulled him up. YangYang’s palm was warm against his, and the tightness in Renjun’s chest had nothing to do with getting jumped in the hallway.

“I was just trying to do him a favor,” the witch in Jaemin’s hold gasped when Jaemin released his grip enough that his hair wasn’t about to tear out of his scalp.

“You can explain that to Professor Seo when we bring you to him,” Donghyuck said.

All four of the witches paled.

“I thought you weren’t a snitch, Donghyuck,” one of them protested.

Donghyuck stuck his pinky finger in his ear and twisted it around. “Huh? Thought I heard someone call me a snitch. I must have heard wrong. What do you think?” He flicked whatever he’d dug out of his ear at the witch he sat on.

“Didn’t hear a thing,” Jaemin said.

“That’s what I thought.”

None of the four witches said another word. No one spoke until Renjun ventured a quiet, “Thanks.”

“It’s our responsibility to make sure this runs smoothly,” Jeno said coolly.

“Right,” Renjun said.

Jeno looked him over from head to toe, which he should have been irritated by, but he was stupidly glad that it was cool appraisal rather than the disdain reserved for demons. Wow, his bar had fallen to a new level of low.

“Are you hurt?” Jeno asked, with all the interest of someone looking to tick a box on a questionnaire, like _Do you have allergies?_ Or _Describe your activity level._

There was some kind of joke here, that Jeno was asking this after shoving him against a wall earlier. _What do you care?_ Renjun wanted to say, and maybe shove Jeno back and twist his hand in his hair and—okay, no. This wasn’t the time for that. This was time for Renjun to prove that he could play it cool too. Super cool.

“No, I’m fine,” Renjun said. Nice. He’d rate himself a solid 4 out of 5 on the coolness scale.

They dragged the four witches away past him. As they passed, Renjun thought he felt the touch of a hand on his shoulder, but when he turned, Donghyuck’s hand was down by his side. Chenle looked like he wanted to say something to Renjun, but Jisung pulled him away after the others.

Only YangYang lingered.

“You made it back,” Renjun said dumbly.

YangYang didn’t laugh the way he usually would have, but he cracked a smile. “They couldn’t keep me away. But oh they tried, oh how they tried.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We’re not supposed to talk to you before everything goes down, but…” YangYang reached into his pocket, pulled something out, and pressed it into Renjun’s hand. “If anything happens.”

“YangYang, hurry up,” Donghyuck called.

“Coming,” YangYang called back, and jogged to catch up with them. 

Renjun looked down. In the center of his palm was a small silver beetle. He clutched it tight and watched their backs disappear down the stairs.

* * *

Luckily for Renjun, he ran into Johnny while attempting to backtrack to the room. Johnny took him the rest of the way back, and even managed to laugh at how Renjun had gotten lost. If the laughter was a little forced, neither of them mentioned it.

Sicheng scolded Renjun for a solid 5 minutes when he got back, much to Taeyong’s amusement. Still, it was Taeyong who enforced a new rule that Renjun couldn’t go outside without one of them in tow, not that Renjun was particularly interested in trying.

Renjun made no attempt to leave the room the next day, and didn’t ask where Taeyong or Sicheng disappeared to when they stepped out. Sicheng wasn’t outside for long. He spent most of his time in the room too, telling Renjun stories of his past. Renjun pretended he wasn’t interested but secretly was. He especially liked hearing how Taeyong was forced to act as a maid for two weeks.

Taeyong returned sometime in the late afternoon, and the three of them had dinner together. The food went tasteless in Renjun’s mouth when he thought that this was becoming his new normal.

Exactly 20 minutes to 10pm, Johnny and the vampire from before showed up at their door and escorted them through another series of hallways and staircases until they reached a circular wall with many doors lined up one after the other. They went through the door marked Section C10.

The door opened into a great circular space, lined with windows over twice Renjun’s height. A disk hovered in the air just under the center of the ceiling, and as people flowed in through the other doors, large white lily-shaped lights descended out of the disk. Their pale glow exposed rows upon rows of seats surrounding a center dais. A quarter of the seats were already full.

Another vampire witch pair walked over to them, and Johnny directed Sicheng and Taeyong to follow them. They started down the steps until they realized Renjun wasn’t with them. 

“Why isn’t he coming with us?” Sicheng demanded.

“You have two seats on the floor. Renjun will be with us, up top,” Johnny said.

“I’m not okay with this,” Sicheng said, though he didn’t need to. The darkness around him had begun to spread, and the people closest to them murmured uneasily.

Johnny took a step forward, spreading his hands wide. “Each party only gets two seats on the floor, that’s protocol. We’ll keep him safe,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Renjun said, before Sicheng could argue further. “This is more important than where I sit.”

“That’s not—”

“And I know Johnny from before. I trust him.” Renjun wasn’t sure that was true anymore, but it seemed to placate Sicheng, and Johnny flashed him a genuine, surprised smile.

Johnny and the vampire led Renjun up, not to the top row of seats, but even further, to an enclosed off balcony area with three seats only.

“VIP seats,” Johnny joked. The vampire rolled her eyes.

Johnny gestured for Renjun to take the center seat, while the two of them took the ones on either side. Renjun saw Taeyong and Sicheng making their way down the steps to the center dais below. A few of those in the aisles slanted their bodies away as they passed, but most weren’t so obvious.

As Johnny had said, the dais held three pairs of seats. Taeyeon and another vampire already sat in one pair. The head of the witches sat in one of the other seats, the seat beside his empty. Not long after Taeyong and Sicheng took their places, Professor Seo hastened down the steps and took the last seat.

The lily flower lights pulsed bright white, and all conversation died.

The head of the witches stood. “As most of you know, we’re here to discuss an alliance between witches, vampires, and these demons.” The dais must have been magicked to amplify sound, because although he did not raise his voice, each of the words resounded through the whole space. The word alliance came out slow, like he had to force it out. Some of the witches murmured. Most of the vampires didn’t speak.

Taeyong stood next. He spoke of the Seal weakening, the demon that could be released, and the demon that wanted to release him. He neglected to tell them that the latter demon had paid them a personal recruitment visit. Renjun tried to read the faces in the rows below, but the lighting was too dim and he was too far above to see them well. Silence followed.

“I don’t see why this would make us want an alliance,” Taeyeon said. “If we are to believe you, the problem is the weakening Seal, and this will not be solved by an alliance.”

Professor Seo replied, “We cannot restore the Seal, so we must be ready to fight. Sometimes a lesser evil is needed to fight a greater one.” Taeyong and Sicheng bristled but did not protest. 

The vampire beside Taeyong stretched his arms behind his head. “Why can’t we restore the Seal? Surely what’s been done before can be done again.”

“You know why we can’t,” Professor Seo said.

“No, I don’t. Is a willing sacrifice that hard to find?”

The head of the witches rose to his feet. “We are not going to pay for this in blood, not again.”

The vampire folded one leg over the other. “I’m not saying that you have to do it.”

Renjun couldn’t make out the face of the head of the witches, but the flap of his hands was easy enough to read. And even without that, they all heard the clear derision. “Then one of yours will do it?”

A bare flash of a white line, the vampire showing his teeth. “That is unkind of you when we’ve already lost the most. But we will be forgiving this once, these are troubling times… No, we’re saying that if the demons are truly interested in an alliance, they should give up one of theirs.”

The darkness around Taeyong flared out. “We will not,” he snarled.

The vampire leaned back in his seat. “Then I don’t see the point of this discussion.”

“If you will just—”

Five of the ground level windows shattered, spraying glass across the floor. Some of the occupants nearest the windows screamed as fragments of glass sliced across their skin. Others ducked under their seats.

A cloud of darkness swirled in through the broken glass, making it hard to see the figure that walked cloaked within it. 

“So kind of you to gather them all in one place, Taeyong dear,” the demon said.

Several projectiles arced in out of the dark cloud, and where they landed smoke billowed into the space. Some people covered their mouths and noses, and ran for the doors. Others ran toward the dark cloud. Bolts of energy arced across the smoke, lighting it with colors that would have been beautiful at another time.

Johnny hauled Renjun up by one arm and the vampire took the other. Together they started to pull him out of the space.

“Wait, but—” Renjun lost sight of Taeyong and Sicheng through the smoke. He saw Professor Seo shouting, his hands blazing with purple lines that jumped from fingertip to fingertip.

“Sorry,” Johnny said. Before Renjun could ask for what, five points of weight pressed on the back of his head and light burst against the backs of his eyes. For a second he could see every vein interposed over his vision, illuminated with a blue afterglow.

Then it all went white.

Renjun thought he heard a disappointed accusation. “A trap?”

He had the crazy thought that it was Donghyuck, but it sounded nothing like him. Or Professor Seo? Or no one at all.

* * *

Renjun came to in a dimly lit room without any windows. The room was just large enough for the cot he was lying down on, and one chair. He slowly sat himself up and touched the top of his head. He found no tender spots. Overall he felt okay. Hungry in more ways than one, but no pain.

When his eyes had adjusted to the light, he got up and tried the door. Locked.

Someone must have heard him jiggle the doorknob, because less than a minute later the door swung open. A vampire he didn’t recognize came in and took a seat on the empty chair.

“How are you doing?” she asked, saccharine smile pasted on her lips like a tattoo. She didn’t wait for a reply, which was fine because he had none. “I hope you understand your position, now that your companions have betrayed us—”

“Did they really?”

“Don’t interrupt,” she snarled, saccharine smile gone like it’d never existed. When he stayed quiet, it returned. “They may have betrayed us, but I have it on good authority that you didn’t know about it. You can make up for their mistakes.”

“I don’t understand,” Renjun said.

She didn’t explain. She reached over, patted him awkwardly on the shoulder, still with that smile fixed in place. It took all he had not to recoil. “Think about it,” she said.

* * *

Renjun lost track of time. He’d tried to keep count of the days by the meals they brought him and when they took him out to the bathroom, but he wasn’t sure any of it happened on a schedule.

They had someone posted outside his room in a mask. He knew the person standing there changed by their height and build, but the mask stayed the same. He almost felt sorry for them for getting slated with demon bathroom duty, but not enough not to resent the way they jerked him down the hall. He took bits of energy from them when he could, just enough to keep the edge off. They didn’t notice.

The route to the bathroom was gray walls and no windows. He passed other rooms and forks in the path, suggesting the place was larger than he’d thought. The whole of it felt less of a prison than a bomb shelter.

The vampire came back again, after what Renjun thought was several days. He expected her to ask about Sicheng and Taeyong, but she didn’t mention them aside from one question about how long he’d known them and some disappointment that it was shorter than she’d thought. 

“I’m on your side, as much as anyone can be,” she said. She praised how undemonlike he was.

He had no reply to that.

She gathered both his hands in hers and clasped them together. The touch, mixed with the energy under her skin and the smile on her face, made him sick. “In a few days, you’ll have a choice. You must try to understand what’s important. Wouldn’t you rather be a savior than a casualty?” she said.

His pulse fluttered at the ends of his fingertips.

* * *

A rough shake jerked Renjun out of sleep. He almost lashed out on instinct, a coil of black thorns snaking out of one fingertip. Then he recognized the face in front of him.

“Donghyuck?” It was a little soon for insanity, wasn’t it? Even if he had been stuck alone in a room for days.

“So you really do have demon powers. Now get a move on,” Donghyuck said. “We don’t have time for you to sit around looking stupid.” Okay, he hadn’t gone crazy. Definitely Donghyuck.

“Why are you—”

“Aren’t you listening? No time, no time.”

Still bewildered, Renjun let himself be pushed out of the room.

“Hurry up,” Jeno hissed from outside the door. Renjun halted when he saw him, but Donghyuck pushed him again, and he stumbled forward, almost tripping over a body on the ground. He caught a glimpse of a mask before another shove between the shoulderblades, and the three of them took off running.

“You, he—why are you here?”

“Less talking, more running,” Donghyuck hissed. “But if it wasn’t obvious, we’re saving your sorry ass.”

“How’d you even find me?” 

“We got your location from YangYang. He wants his beetle back, by the way.” As if on cue, the beetle Renjun had forgotten about skittered out from somewhere in his clothes onto his arm. Renjun yelped and shook his arm. The beetle made a whirring noise Renjun swore was indignation, and hopped over onto Donghyuck’s shoulder. 

Renjun still wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or not, though he doubted he could conjure up a Donghyuck this realistic. “You’re going to get in so much shit for this.”

Donghyuck stuck out his tongue. “Not if they don’t know it was us, oh ye of little faith. Which they won’t, because it’s me. It’s lucky they were more concerned about keeping your location secret than keeping others out. There’s almost no one here.”

They ran down pathways Renjun didn’t recognize, Donghyuck taking the lead, until they reached a silver door. Donghyuck pushed it open with a blast of wind instead of his hand. A show off even now. The three of them burst out into open air, dirt under their feet, the stars above. They kept running.

A figure by the door followed after them, and Renjun near panicked before Jaemin’s familiar voice said, “What took you so long? They’re going to be back soon.”

“Don’t blame me. I didn’t know he’d sleep like the dead,” Donghyuck said.

“Weren’t you roommates for years?” Jaemin asked.

“Yeah, so?”

Renjun hadn’t expected the four of them to gather again like this, or to gather again at all. Until now, he hadn’t let himself contemplate how much he missed it. It hit him all at once, leaving him breathless. He had so much he wanted to ask, to say, to explain, but the words wouldn’t come out. He hadn’t realized he’d slowed down until Jeno tugged on his arm. “What are you stalling for? Come on.”

He ended up saying nothing. They ran off the bare dirt into the trees. Some distance in, Jaemin and Donghyuck split off in different directions.

“They’re not coming with us?” Renjun asked.

“They have other places they’re expected at, and we thought it’d be better to leave some fake trails,” Jeno said.

As Renjun followed Jeno, he remembered a time that felt long ago but wasn’t really, when he’d first run after Jeno up a different hill, following that same back. He’d never expected it to become so familiar to him.

He’d been afraid then, too. Afraid for himself, afraid of the unknown. But being afraid for someone else was a new and uncomfortable sensation. He should tell Jeno to go back.

Jeno noticed him slow down again, and held out a hand.

“So it’s okay if a demon touches you now?” Renjun said. It was a joke, but it didn’t sound like one. In a way it was a reminder to himself, that there were lines now he shouldn’t cross.

“No, but I’ll make an exception this time,” Jeno said.

“This time,” Renjun said. He could allow himself that. He reached out and took the hand. He should tell Jeno to go back, but he would hold onto this for a little bit longer.

* * *

Renjun expected Jeno to drop him off somewhere in the forest, so he wasn’t surprised when they stopped by a cluster of trees. He was surprised when Jeno settled down at the base of one of the trees.

“Do you want to take first watch, or should I?” Jeno asked.

“You’re not leaving?”

“First watch or second?”

“You shouldn’t stay here.”

Jeno leaned back against the trunk of the tree. “Do you want me to go?”

“No,” Renjun said, too fast, too loud. Heat crawled up the back of his neck, but it faded in the cold of the night. “But won’t people be suspicious if you’re gone for too long?”

Jeno cracked his neck. “I’ll just stay until we get to somewhere where it’s safer for you to go off on your own.” He didn’t clarify when or where that would be. Renjun heard the smallest catch of breath in Jeno’s voice. He tried not to read into it, but it was there. He thought about how he probably couldn’t come back after he was gone. He wondered if Jeno thought about it too.

“Okay,” Renjun said, though he knew he shouldn’t. He knew somewhere someone was probably connecting the dots, and if Jeno was missing when Renjun was, it wouldn’t be good for him.

But one night couldn’t hurt, right?

Renjun sat down beside Jeno, let their shoulders touch. He let out a breath when Jeno didn’t draw away.

“You can take first watch,” Renjun said, but he didn’t lie down. He studied Jeno’s face without shame, trying to carve the image of it into the recesses of his mind. “Why did you come back for me? I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”

Jeno sighed softly. “I’ve never wanted nothing to do with you. Wish I did, honestly.”

“Are you...angry at me?”

Jeno crossed his arms over the top of his knees. “I’m not angry.” He blew out air, and it puffed white in front of them. “I was. Your familiar was a demon and you didn’t seem surprised by it, and then you were a demon. What was I supposed to think? I didn’t want to believe you’d turned on us, but it wasn’t too far of a stretch.”

“I wouldn’t do that, I—”

Jeno tilted his head so that it rested against the crook of his arms, facing Renjun. “See, this is the problem. All you have to do is say that, and I can’t convince myself not to believe you.”

The leaves swayed over their heads. Jeno rubbed the back of his neck. “You want to know what really made me mad? I could never make myself believe that you’d turned on us, though it didn’t add up otherwise. And even on the days I believed it the most, I…”

He blew another puff of white air. “I missed you anyway.”

Renjun let his head fall to rest on Jeno’s shoulder, and Jeno didn’t push him away. He didn’t think too much about his words. It wouldn’t matter soon. “I missed you too,” he said. It wasn’t so hard to be honest, now.

Renjun closed his eyes. When he felt Jeno’s arm circle tentative and slow around his waist, he let himself shift closer. The night was chill and Jeno’s body was cool, but he felt warm.

But Renjun couldn’t help thinking of what would happen after, when the Seal broke, when Jeno and all his friends were plunged into war. Where would he be? Would he ever know what happened to them? Could he still keep running, even then?

He fell asleep like that.

* * *

Renjun felt far from rested, but he didn’t complain when Jeno nudged him awake. The pale light of dawn must have passed a while ago, and the distant sun stood a beacon over the horizon.

“How are you holding up?” Jeno asked.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that? I’m the one who got some sleep.”

Jeno yawned. “Yeah, you’re right. He stretched, and without warning laid his head down on Renjun’s lap.

“Hey, you’re heavy,” Renjun protested.

“You got to use my shoulder for two hours, and I’m not about to use that bony thing, so I think this is only fair.” He flashed Renjun a sleepy smile that would have gotten Renjun to say yes to anything.

“Fine, whatever. Just this time.”

No one would know if he ran his hand through Jeno’s hair, let it curl there until Jeno fell asleep. Just this time.

When he was sure Jeno wouldn’t wake, he shifted Jeno’s head off his lap. He took off his jacket and wadded it under Jeno’s head.

If he knelt by Jeno for longer than he’d planned on, no one had to know. He let himself trail one finger down the side of Jeno’s face from the corner of his eye to the end of his chin. “I will miss you,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

* * *

It was easy to find them. Renjun’s senses had improved, and while he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, it was useful.

He walked straight into the arms of his pursuers.

* * *

His escort guard was small, just two, a witch and the vampire who’d talked to him in the windowless room. He was happy there were fewer people than he’d expected. He didn’t want them to see, and it gave him hope that not everyone thought the worst of him.

The vampire looked like she wanted to rip him a new one. He figured he deserved it since his escape was probably responsible for the green bruise on her cheek, that hadn’t faded completely despite vampire healing speeds.

She knotted a rope around his wrists.

“Do I need to be tied up when I’ve already agreed to this?” Renjun asked.

“Forgive me if I don’t believe in your best intentions,” she said. He winced when she pulled the rope tight with a vicious jerk.

“I understand what’s important now,” he said.

She squinted at him and shook her head. “Good,” she said. He knew she didn’t understand.

* * *

The Seal wasn’t much to look at. Two concentric white circles on the ground, the inner one large enough only for two people to stand inside. Three jagged lines ran through the side of the outer circle, splintering it into four pieces.

Renjun could feel the disruption from those cracks, an irregular pulse breaking into the rhythm of a heartbeat. 

The ground was bare for several meters in all directions around the outer circle, and at the edge of the blackened dirt, there grew grass that had yellowed in the heat of the past summer. The sun dipped low toward the line of the distant mountains, painting the sky in purple and orange. In its light the grass gleamed gold.

There was no pomp, no ceremony, no choir in the background. Just the sound of the rustling grass.

Renjun was mildly irritated that the two with him were taller than he was. The vampire led him to the edge of the outer white circle. She drew a small silver knife from a pouch at her waist. It too gleamed gold in the waning light.

“It’ll be fast,” she said.

“It’s such a beautiful day,” he said, because it was. That was probably why his eyes were stinging. He fixed his gaze on the distant point where the sun had become a half circle that touched the mountains.

Don’t look at the sun or you’ll go blind, his mother used to say. She was right. It was blinding, this beautiful world. It would be beautiful tomorrow, too.

He wished they’d untied his wrists.

He saw the vampire’s arm move, but didn’t look down. A dot of cold touched his throat.

Then the dot vanished, and a cry split the quiet. Something warm splattered against Renjun’s leg, and when he looked down, he saw spots of red. Red and darkness, and none of it his.

The knife had fallen and lay beside the vampire. Her head had been smashed into the ground, and blood trickled from her forehead and along her forearm from gashes on the back of the hand that had held the knife. Dots of blood sprayed toward his leg from the fingers still grasping toward him. He lurched backward when he pieced together that her third and fourth finger had been sheared off. Some of her blood fell on the cracks in the circle, and where it touched, the cracks widened the slightest fraction.

The demon squatted over the vampire. He rolled his head in a slow circle, then picked up her mutilated hand and waved it at Renjun.

“Pity I didn’t get an invite,” he said. “But I assumed you’d all just forgotten and wouldn’t mind if I invited myself.”

Renjun didn’t know what’d happened to the witch. He didn’t get a chance to question it further because the demon raised a hand and his energy flared. Renjun threw himself sideways.

Darkness shot over the side of Renjun’s head. He hit the ground and pain stabbed up his elbow.

“Good reflexes,” the demon said, from somewhere too close, and Renjun had to ignore the pain in his elbow to scramble up again. He tumbled over his feet, rolling a couple times in the grass. A black claw swiped down where he’d just been, cutting through a chunk of grass.

Renjun drew on his magic while he pushed himself up and forward. Black thorns spiraled out from his fingertips and he tossed it out blind behind himself. The demon hissed. Renjun looked over his shoulder to see an edge of the black thorns slice into the demon’s cheek, but otherwise miss him entirely. It slowed the demon down for less than a second.

Renjun kept running and trying to throw magic at the same time. He couldn’t do either well. He regretted not trying harder to improve his aim back when he practiced with Chenle.

Renjun tripped over a lump on the ground, the world tilted, and he fell hard on his front. He didn’t have time to get the air back into his lungs—he had to get up and he had to get up now. But his body wouldn’t listen. He coughed instead and rolled over onto his back, and the sky spun above him.

He reached for his magic instead, he didn’t know what else to do. There wasn’t much left. He tried to see if he could steal energy from the demon, but it was like trying to draw water from a well without a bucket. 

He gathered all the power he had. Call it a last ditch attempt, but he knew he wouldn’t have enough for another try. He let the demon get closer, closer, then threw it all in his direction. Coils of black thorns spilled out of Renjun’s hands. 

The demon tried to halt, but he had too much momentum. He had to throw himself sideways instead, and the closest coil of Renjun’s magic tangled around his leg, biting into the flesh. The demon snarled, half pain and half rage. He swiped at the coil, but couldn’t cut through. The other coils joined the first and began to wrap around the demon’s legs, entwining up toward his torso.

His face contorted, and for the first time Renjun saw fear.

 _A little bit more,_ Renjun thought. But he’d never been that lucky.

Before the coils reached the demon’s chest, they slowed. The last of Renjun’s energy ran out, and they withered. 

The demon rose unsteadily to his feet, face still contorted. Lacerations lined his lower body, dotted with silver. Silver dripped from the largest cut snaking down his inner thigh as he stalked toward Renjun. 

Renjun realized the lump he’d tripped over earlier was the vampire. Now he lay directly on top of the Seal, one foot still hooked over the vampire’s body. He wanted to shove himself away from her, but he had not the strength to move. The demon moved slower now, with a slight limp, but he could take his sweet time. It wasn’t like Renjun was going anywhere.

It was sad that this was as far as Renjun’s power could take him. Some witch he was, some demon he was. He had used all his energy, and the demon wasn’t even incapcitated. He supposed the human part had won out after all. Somehow, it didn’t bother him so much.

The power of the Seal hummed against Renjun’s back. Even weakened as it was, he could feel its power, could not imagine what it had been when it was whole. It pulled at him, like it wanted to take anything he could give, like it knew what he’d been brought here for.

He saw the knife, past the tip of his foot. Maybe if he could just finish what the vampire had begun, that would be enough. It was pathetically, futilely close. He couldn’t move.

He almost wished the demon would come faster. He couldn’t stand the wait. It gave him time to be afraid.

A rush of heat passed over Renjun’s head, and fire bloomed around the demon. A moment later a knee hit the dirt beside Renjun’s head, and Jeno’s head blocked the sky. Donghyuck stood behind him, fire whirling out of his hands. Another figure barreled into the demon. Jaemin?

He heard a voice behind them that sounded like Chenle’s. Why were they here? They were all crazy, they were all idiots. They were going to get themselves killed, and it’d be his fault. Renjun’s eyes were stinging again, and he no longer had a sunset to blame it on.

“Well, you look like shit,” Donghyuck said, by way of greeting.

Jeno reached for Renjun’s hand.

Renjun wanted to shake his head, but succeeded only in turning his neck halfway to one side. “Don’t,” he croaked. “I don’t think I can stop myself right now. I might suck you dry.” Jeno had felt the hook and pull of Renjun’s power before. He should understand.

“If you need it, then take it,” Jeno said, and he took Renjun’s hand.

Renjun tried to fight it, but he couldn’t resist. He missed the step between Jeno’s skin touching his and Jeno’s energy starting to flow into him. He must have reached in at some point, sunk in his little claws, but he didn’t remember doing it. He wanted this like water, like oxygen, no, more than that. Breathing couldn’t give him this satisfaction.

Jeno hissed, and it almost gave Renjun the strength to fight it off. Almost. He managed to shake his hand weakly, a pathetic attempt to dislodge Jeno’s grip.

If Jeno would just let go, he could stop. He was sure. He could do it. He would do it. But Jeno wouldn’t let go.

“Let me help,” Donghyuck said, and this was when Jeno was supposed to tell Donghyuck no, and if he had any level of intelligence, let go himself. But neither of those things must have happened, because another hand circled around Renjun’s wrist.

“Don’t know what you’re doing, but I want in,” Chenle said. Two more hands touched Renjun’s arms.

Their power flooded into him, dimming his other senses. Sounds came to him distorted as if drawn through water. Background sounds. He had to remind himself there was a demon there, somewhere.

“Is it just me, or does this feel really weird?” Chenle said.

“Oh shut up,” Donghyuck said.

Renjun tried to ride the wave of their energy, tried not to sink too far under where he’d go senseless to everything but the call of his instincts. 

He wasn’t sure he was entirely successful, but with all of them together, especially with Donghyuck and Jeno’s level of power, Renjun didn’t need too much before he could force himself to cut off the influx of energy and shove their hands off. All except Jeno because he still wouldn’t let go. 

“You’re all idiots,” Renjun said weakly.

“And you don’t look like you’re going to die anymore, so you should be grateful,” Donghyuck shot back, only a little shakily.

The pull of the Seal felt like it’d grown stronger over time. Renjun eyed the knife below his feet, the vampire on the ground, her blood in the earth.

As he lay there, the pull became almost painful, digging like points into Renjun’s skull. Without thinking, he sent a tendril of his magic probing out, as if that could soothe the rising pain in his head. When it touched the Seal, the tendril drained into it, pulled down and away. Renjun gasped at the loss, but underneath him he felt the edge of one crack in the Seal recede a tiny bit.

Then Renjun understood. He gathered all his energy, all that his friends had just given him, and pushed it down toward the ground. He meant to let it flow out little by little, but the pull of the Seal ripped the flow from his hands. He lost any semblance of control. 

He told himself not to fight it, and found that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. He had no more power than a bystander as it cracked through the outer shell of darkness and tore out the bright strands of his magic underneath.

It was like someone had cracked open his chest, and was cutting out silvers of his flesh with a serrated knife. He tasted blood. He must have bit the inside of his cheek.

“What’s going on?” Jeno demanded, but Renjun could only shake, his jaw clenched tight. If he tried to speak, he would scream. He gripped Jeno’s hand so hard that his knuckles turned white.

Huge strands of light streamed away from him at first, but they became smaller and smaller until they were thin as a strand of hair. He was draining down to the last drop, scraped dry and hollow. All the brightness vanishing, and still the Seal pulled at him.

It hurt less now, the stabs of a needle instead of a knife. Each beat of his heart slammed against the hollow cavern of his chest. He wasn’t sure if the echo was pain or emptiness.

He didn’t know he could be so empty and still exist.

The pull wasn’t as strong now. Somewhere very far down, Renjun felt one last spark of brightness. This last spark did not want to go, and the pull wasn’t enough to wrench it away. Renjun could keep it if he tried, a piece left for himself.

Renjun cradled it. He thought of how far he’d come since he’d discovered magic, of everyone he’d met on the way. Of walking through the academy campus, of power he’d learned to call his own blossoming from his fingertips, of once being carried down a hill and later walking down on his own two feet. He thought of magic.

Then, he let it go.

When it was gone, Renjun turned his head to the side. Underneath his arm he saw the white circle knitting itself together.

In the background, he heard crashes and shouting. His vision swam. He thought he saw Taeyong and Sicheng. Someone was still holding his hand.

* * *

The following days passed in a blur. They worked out a truce with Taeyong and Sicheng after their aid in subduing the other demon. There were enough eyewitnesses that no one contested their role in the fight. Someone gave Renjun a medal for fixing the Seal. He chucked it in the trash.

This time the truce was sealed with magic and blood, and as soon as that was done, Taeyong and Sicheng showed up at Renjun’s doorstep.

“We’re leaving the city,” Sicheng said. “Do you want to come with us?”

Donghyuck crossed his arms from where he watched in the kitchen. He didn’t try to pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping.

Renjun shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” Sicheng said with a sad smile. Renjun understood then that he hadn’t expected Renjun to say yes.

Taeyong cleared his throat. “Well, I guess we better get going.”

At the door, Renjun asked, “Is this goodbye?”

Taeyong and Sicheng looked at each other. “We’ll visit,” Sicheng said, and they headed down the stairs. Renjun closed the door behind them.

Renjun hesitated with his hand on the doorknob. Then he ran into the kitchen, knocking Donghyuck out of the way.

“Hey, watch it,” Donghyuck yelped.

Renjun ignored him, rummaged around the cupboard, and ran out of the apartment. He pounded down the stairs.

They’d already reached the corner of the street by the time he ran out onto the sidewalk. Renjun ran after them.

“Sicheng,” Renjun called.

They both turned. Taeyong raised an eyebrow. “Did you change your mind after all, or…?”

Renjun pressed a bag of shrimp chips into Sicheng’s hands. “Take this with you,” he said.

Sicheng turned the bag over in his hands.

“I just wanted you to know, you’re my favorite demon,” Renjun said.

“And you don’t even care that I’m standing right here,” Taeyong said.

Sicheng turned the bag over again, stared hard at red and white packaging, and swept Renjun into a bone-crushing hug.

“You’re going to crush the chips! And me,” Renjun protested.

“You should know that I’m Sicheng’s favorite,” Taeyong said to the air.

* * *

Renjun sat on a stool by the counter. The cold made his chest ache. His chest always ached now, but it’d been getting worse as the numbers on the thermostat dipped down.

It’d been three months since he left the academy. There was no point in staying when he had no magic left.

Chenle had come with him. They both pretended that Chenle hadn’t been told to keep an eye on Renjun, and that Renjun wasn’t a bargaining chip to keep Sicheng and Taeyong in check. Most days, Renjun forgot he had a keeper.

He only remembered when he went out, because Chenle always asked him, “Where are you going?” It was hard to tell now when Chenle asked as a friend, and when he asked because he was required to know where Renjun was at all times. Sometimes, Renjun was really tempted to give Chenle the slip, though he knew it wasn’t Chenle’s fault. Keeping Renjun on a leash was a small price to pay for freedom for both of them—Chenle from the obligations of his family, and Renjun from a tighter leash.

The first month had been hell. He’d kept trying to do magic. It’s an accident, he’d tell Chenle, I keep forgetting I don’t have magic! Funny, right? Each time, the ache in his chest would flare into a burn that left him coughing up bile over the kitchen sink.

All he had left within him were the black husk remnant of a demon and the pale glow of his humanity.

The kicker was that his body couldn’t handle even that. Now that his magic was gone, he’d thought the hunger would go with it, but instead it just came on slower. And with his magic gone, he could still sense energy but couldn’t absorb any.

By the end of the first month, he’d gotten feverish enough that Chenle had called Sicheng in a panic. Somehow he got a hold of him through YangYang. YangYang was on some special creation magic exchange program for the rest of the year—so how and why YangYang was in contact with Sicheng Renjun didn’t not know and was not going to hazard to guess.

Sicheng had pumped him full of energy, leaving him wired and giddy for two days. For a week after that he’d felt good again, almost fooled himself into thinking it’d last. Then the hunger came back in slow, creeping increments. He got used to it eventually, the mild hunger all the time. He could hold out for a month and a half before he stopped being a functional human being. 

The silver lining was that it gave him an excuse to see Sicheng and sometimes Taeyong every month. But that made him feel like he was keeping them on a leash too.

“Maybe you can form a pact with a witch,” Sicheng had said last time, but Renjun didn’t know if there was enough demon left in him for that. He didn’t tell Sicheng that because he thought it’d make him sad, but he suspected Sicheng knew. The darkness simply existed within him now, less than impotent. Some days, he simply existed.

The door jingled, and Renjun didn’t look up.

“Hey, go check if the customer needs your help. I don’t pay you to sit around and look pretty,” Yuta shouted from the back storage.

“No one comes this late. It’s probably just Jisung here to bother Chenle again. Too bad Chenle’s out.” Jisung was the only one of their friends who knew where Chenle and Renjun were. He’d found out early on from their mind-link, and it wasn’t like Chenle had tried to hide it.

“This is why I’m going to give Chenle a raise and not you. He understands customer service.”

“Don’t lie, you’re not going to give anyone a raise.”

Yuta mumbled something vaguely threatening, so Renjun hopped off the stool and made his way around the aisles of bottles to the front. “Welcome to Yuta’s Potion Emporium,” he said in monotone.

Yuta must have heard him even from the back, because he shouted, “Customer service!”

Renjun groaned, but continued with a bare minimum of perkiness, “How can I help you…” His voice trailed off when he saw Jeno standing at the door.

“So this is where you’ve been on ‘vacation’ for three months?” Jeno said, making air quotes with his fingers.

Renjun’s brain short circuited. He gaped at Jeno without reply until Jeno made a frustrated sound, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him out the door. The bell hanging from the door jingled on their way out.

“Are you actually leaving the store during work hours? Renjun, I can and will cut your pay,” Yuta shouted. The door closed behind them, cutting off whatever else he said.

Jeno let go when he reached the curb of the sidewalk. “Hey, that hurt,” Renjun said, rubbing his arm.

“Donghyuck and Jaemin are on their way too. Before you ask, we forced it out of Jisung.” Jeno crossed his arms, clearly waiting.

But how could Renjun explain? It wasn’t that he’d wanted to hide it. He really hadn’t known where they’d be going at first, so it’d just been easier to call it a vacation. Then with the aching and the hunger, it’d just been easier not to say. He kept telling himself he’d tell them when it was okay, when he was okay again. Trying to hide his attempts at magic from Chenle was hard enough.

“It sucks not having magic anymore.” Renjun stopped short, swallowed. That hadn’t been what he meant to say.

But it was too late, it was out now, and Jeno’s half-stricken expression reminded Renjun why he hadn’t wanted them to see him like this. But it also reminded him how much he missed them, how much he missed Jeno. It was nice to know they cared.

Renjun traced the outline of his sleeve. “I’ve been thinking how without magic I wouldn’t have met any of you.”

“Why does that matter? You met us.” Jeno made it sound so simple. “Is that why you left the academy?”

Renjun shrugged, tried for flippancy, didn’t make it all the way there. “I don’t belong there, not anymore. Have to live the human life now.” 

“Working at a magic shop,” Jeno pointed out.

Renjun folded his arms over each other. He hadn’t been able to keep away. So sue him. “Yeah, I know. I’m just trying to figure things out. I’m working on it.”

“Can’t I be a part of that?”

Renjun startled, and his eyes flicked up to meet Jeno’s, flicked away. “Why would you want to be? This isn’t...I’m not fun to be around right now.”

“I chose to be here, not for fun, but because I care about you.”

Renjun’s breath caught in his throat.

“So? Can’t I?” 

Jeno watched him intently, serious. Renjun couldn’t just shrug this off. Was it bad that he didn’t want to? Jeno’s eyes caught his, held. Don’t look at the sun or you’ll go blind, his mother used to say. Like she’d known he’d look.

Maybe he’d never known how not to.

Renjun breathed in a shaky breath. “Yeah, you can,” he said, on the exhale. “If you want to, I want you to.” 

A slow smile spread across Jeno’s face. Renjun couldn’t look away. It was blinding, this beautiful world. It would be beautiful tomorrow, too.

A warm body almost bowled Renjun over. An arm snaked around his neck and squeezed, trapping him somewhere between a chokehold and a hug.

“Renjun Huang, I am going to kill you,” Donghyuck said. “I mean I get that you like to brood on shit alone, but isn’t this too much?”

“Might join him on that. Three months? Not cool,” Jaemin said, and that was scarier than Donghyuck’s threat because Jaemin didn’t make threats. Jaemin ruffled Renjun’s hair in passing. It was mildly menacing.

“But for now, I’ll settle for the employee discount on Yuta’s most expensive potion,” Donghyuck proclaimed.

“I don’t have an employee discount,” Renjun said.

“And you never will with the way you work,” Yuta called over. He stood by the half-open door, glaring at all of them. “I don’t pay you to hang around with your friends.”

“Sorry,” Renjun said sheepishly, ducking his head. He started back toward the door, but Yuta held up a hand.

“I’ll let you off early for today. Don’t get used to it.”

They trooped back to Yuta’s shop anyway because Donghyuck wanted to check it out. Yuta watched Donghyuck with the eyes of a hawk (and of a falcon; his familiar watched from above). “If I see anything missing…” Yuta warned.

Renjun tried to warn Yuta to stop talking before Donghyuck saw it as a challenge.

Renjun pushed Jeno and Jaemin out of a section with a sign that read, _Power up. The super strength you’ve always wanted_.

“Hey, I was looking at that,” Jaemin squawked, but Renjun blocked his way back. Vampires did not need any additional strength, as temporary as the potions were. “I am so going to complain to your manager,” Jaemin said.

“You can try.”

Chenle poked his hand around the corner. He’d gotten back from his errand. “Where’d you all come from?”

Donghyuck leapt at him, and Chenle pinwheeled backward, getting dangerously close to sending a potion flying off the shelves. “Can’t believe I missed even you,” Donghyuck said, while Yuta shouted, “If you break _anything_ , you are paying for it.”

“I can’t say I feel the same way,” Chenle said, fending off Donghyuck’s grabby hands.

It was easy to be with them like this. Maybe Renjun didn’t need a place to belong. Maybe this could be enough.

The physical pain in Renjun’s chest didn’t go away, but some other ache started to ease. He wasn’t okay today, and he might not be tomorrow. But someday, he would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's a wrap!
> 
> i'm no good at the sappy stuff, but here goes the longest chapter note i've ever written. which by the way you are not obligated at all to read lol
> 
> it's been a long and wild journey to get here. i never thought I would hit 200k words, write this story into september, or get to this ending from that beginning. i look back and am like wait, this happened? 
> 
> there's been a lot of ups and downs getting here, moments when it's been a lot of fun but also moments when i had no idea what i was doing, when it felt too large and long and impossible and i wanted to give up on the story altogether
> 
> so i really want to thank you all for following along on this journey with me and giving this story so much more love than i ever expected. not much is certain in these times, but i am certain that without your love and encouragement this would not exist
> 
> and with that, we are finally, truly here at the end
> 
> ps also doing this has helped me get through quarantine funk, so thanks for that!  
> pss who else used to eat those calbee shrimp chips as a kid  
> psss oh just remembered this. no i'm not gonna reveal the vampire mark was with very early on. i have a person in mind though haha
> 
> pssss/edit: reading your comments now i feel like my responses are woefully inadequate, but pls know that even if my replies are short, they all touch my cold stone heart and bring me much joy


End file.
